29.07.2025

Two serious Napoli incidents in four days

Two men were seriously injured yesterday in a Pompei spider lift incident yesterday, while on Thursday three men died in a transport platform in Naples.
The spider lift incident
Two men were seriously injured yesterday in Pompei, Italy, when the jib of a 42 metre spider lift broke away from the main boom throwing the men, one 35 and the other 43, to the ground from a height of around 15 to 20 metres. The fact that they fell to the ground suggests that neither was wearing an anchored harness, although initial feedback from the investigators indicates that they were in fact wearing harnesses.

The incident occurred on Monday morning near the Pompeii train station, the two technicians are employees of a telecommunications company and were working on a mobile telephone antenna from the platform of a 42 metre Easy Lift RA420 from the L.T.M Noleggio fleet in Naples. We were told, and it also looks as though something caused the jib pivot weldment on the end of the boom to fracture, causing the extended jib to drop until it struck the main boom.

The lift was, we understand working from the car park of a supermarket, with one man landing near the machine, while the other ended up on the railway tracks. One of them was reported last night as being serious but stable while the other remains in a critical condition.
The municipal police have been asked to investigate the incident by the Torre Annunziata Public Prosecutor's Office, with the support of the local police.

The fatal transport platform incident

The incident above stirred anger and more attention as it comes just a few days after three men died in nearby Naples, when the mast of a small hoist/transport platform collapsed dropping the three to their death.

It looks like a case of a bad mast connection - bolt failure or missing nut – near the top, but we had not yet heard of this incident until now, it came to light when we were checking out information we had been sent on the spider lift incident and will be looking to find out exactly what happened.

In the meantime, the news bulletin below highlights the incident well.