Mottarone, "in the video the cabin jolts and goes back at 100 km per hour"
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May 25, 2021 It's a metal plate, it weighs five kilos, and it wasn't supposed to be there.
If the causes of the accident at the Mottarone cable car are still to be ascertained, a photo could clarify why the emergency brakes did not work: in one of the images of the crumpled cabin taken by the Fire Brigade you can see a piece of red steel between the tangle of cables and that could be what in the jargon is called 'fork'.
It is, explains an expert who has been following the rescue operations and subsequent investigations since Sunday, of a metal plate that is manually inserted in the upper part of the cabin trolley where there are the roller conveyors (the sort of wheels that slide on the rope) and which is used to forcibly hold the emergency brakes in the open position.
But why are they used? They are used for maintenance needs, explains the expert, therefore for example for work on ropes, greasing of cables or load or line tests. Or also for other reasons: for example to bring the cabin upstream downstream at the end of the day without running the risk that for any reason it may get blocked along the line, perhaps with the operator working in the top station he has to go home.
The forks are used to intervene exclusively on the emergency brakes: the 'normal' ones, which are used to stop the cabin when it arrives at the station, are located on the pulleys, those large wheels on which the haul rope slides that are found in all cableway stations , cable cars or chairlifts.
The fork, if it is confirmed that this is the case, should not have been there. Generally they are found in the arrival and departure stations, says the expert, and are placed manually, they are not "organic" pieces of the cabins.
But when could it have been placed? With certainty it is difficult to know, the expert points out, since the forks prevent the emergency brakes from working: if nothing happens, those brakes must not operate. The plate could therefore have been placed after May 3, the date of the last brake check, and remained there all this time, or the night before, when the cabin was returned to the valley.
In this regard, according to what is learned, there is also a testimony collected by the rescuers according to which an emergency test would have been carried out just the day before the tragedy, sending the cabin that was upstream downstream. One of those situations where the fork is used.