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CERVINIA. The electronic eye of the webcam immortalizes what looks like a gathering of several hundred people in a snow-covered square waiting for the chairlift. The images become the object of word of mouth and after a few days that same webcam remains on, but with a surprising brushstroke of well-placed gray pixels, preventing us from seeing the movements in the square again. It occurs in Cervinia, in the Aosta Valley Valtournenche, one of the queens of the Italian ski resorts already finished in the storm when, at the end of October, the season had started – then immediately closed – in a crazy day of queues and people crowded.
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The new alleged “traffic accident” dates back almost a week, and can be reconstructed through the images of a panoramic webcam service capable of showing, every day from 7.30 to 17.00, the entire area of Cervinia, with 360 degree views, in a few clicks via PC or smartphone. Exploring the images of last December 3 – when, in addition, the aosta valley was still the red zone – attention is focused, in particular, on the exit of the Plan Maison chairlift, at an altitude of 2,500 meters. Until 8:20 in the morning, with the rising sun that paints the snow in the mountains gold, no one is seen. But then something starts to move. At 8.30 you notice at least two groups, well spaced but each made up of a few dozen people all together. Ten minutes later, the two groups turn into a kind of snake that at ten minutes to nine divides into two fractions, although more and more numerous. The one closest to the lift exit, in particular, is so dense that it appears as a single dark patch in the snow. Between 9 and 9:10, when the sun has fully risen and illuminates the square, there are at least 300 people. The crowds screaming and jumping up the chairlift and it will be necessary to wait until 9.50 so that nobody is seen in the square.
What is even more surprising, however, is what happens two days later. On the morning of Saturday, December 5, that same panoramic webcam begins to behave at least in an anomalous way: you can see everything, except the departure of the Plan Maison chairlift, literally canceled by what photographic editing experts call “pixellation”. that is, the masking of part of an image, such as that used to make faces unrecognizable. From that moment on, any movement in the chair lift square is hidden.
“I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about” is the first reaction of Matteo Zanetti, president and manager of Cervino spa, the company that manages the plants not only in Breuil-Cervinia and Valtournenche but also in Chamois and Torgnon. «For us – says Zanetti – there is no meeting. We are scanning the entire area and we are safe. If there were people at the beginning of the chairlift, they were athletes, since they train with us “under the provisions of the dpcm of November 3.” Of course, there are many, even 600-700. But I want to point out that every night we are send a list of who will arrive in the morning and we stagger the groups for the departures. So I don’t know if the implant had problems that day. “And on the webcam that returns the modified images, he replies:” as far as I know there is a camera directed at the Plan Maison that has turned off because the wind has made it shake. “But the webcam is not turned off, it only shows partial images:” I don’t know what to say, we’ll check it. I fall off the pear tree and it seems to me that you want to dig in the murky. We have been working for 40 days so that everything works in the best way and perhaps there is an attempt at exploitation.
