Eitan Biran is being brought round from his induced coma by doctors, to the tragic realisation his parents, brother and great-grandparents were all killed in the tragic crash that took 14 lives
A five-year-old boy is being woken from a medically induced coma to find both his parents and his brother died in the tragic cable car crash in north Italy that killed 14 people.
Eitan Biran is to be brought round by ‘cautiously optimistic’ medics today after an MRI scan showed he had escaped brain damage in the horror accident on Sunday.
Little Eitan is the sole survivor of the devastating gondola crash, which saw 14 of the 15 people aboard killed while being transported from Stresa, on Lake Maggiore, to Mottarone mountain in Italy’s Alps.
Medics at Turin’s Regina Margherita hospital warned Eitan is making progress but isn’t out of the woods just yet.
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His doctor said the next few days will be critical to the boy’s recovery and will also see him supported by psychologists from the moment he wakes up as he deals with the trauma of having lost his family, Italian newspaper la Repubblica reports.
“The child has had a peaceful night in hospital, he’s in stable condition and this brought the medical team to start as of this morning the procedure to wake him up through the gradual reduction of medication that is keeping him in a coma,” Giovanni La Valle, director general of hospital Città della Salute, said.
The cable car was approaching a station on top of the 4,900ft Mottarone mountain when it plunged, rolled down the steep terrain and crashed into trees.
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Investigators said on Monday their initial probe into the disaster would look into how the lead cable snapped and why a safety brake mechanism failed to activate.
It is believed the lead cable tragically snapped as it approached its final stop in the 20-minute trip.
Italian prosecutors have opened an investigation into suspected involuntary manslaughter and negligence.
“We are starting from the empirical evidence. The cable sheared and the system of safety brakes clearly did not work,” said public prosecutor Olimpia Bossi.
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Transport and Infrastructure Minister Enrico Giovannini visited the area on Monday and said the government would also set up a commission to look into Italy’s worst cable car disaster since 1998, when 20 people died after a low-flying U.S. warplane accidentally cut through a supporting cable.
“The government, as well all the institutions, are naturally committed to understanding the causes, to understanding what happened,” Giovannini told reporters.