If procedures had been followed to the letter, the Brandizzo tragedy would never have occurred. This is what emerges from the initial investigation by the Ivrea prosecutor's office, called to shed light on the accident that, the other night, claimed the lives of five workers, struck and killed by a train traveling on the railway tracks. Turin-Milan, on the conventional line.
Two people have already been registered as suspects, but it is likely that in the next few hours the investigation will be destined to expand. The first two suspects are the survivors of the accident: Antonio Massa, 46 years old from Grugliasco (Turin), Rfi employee at the construction site, the so-called “company escort”, and Andrea Girardin Gibin, 52 years old from Borgo Vercelli, site manager of Sigifer, the Vercelli company that had the contract for the maintenance work on the tracks, colleague of the five victims.
The first, in particular, present on site a short distance from the construction site, should have prevented the workers from starting work while waiting for the train that hit them to pass. "Serious violations of safety procedures emerged at the time of the accident," explained the chief prosecutor of Ivrea, Gabriella Viglione.
So serious that, although the case was opened for disaster and manslaughter, the investigators do not exclude the possibility of possible intent. A circumstance that would change, and not by a little, the position of the suspects. "There would not have been authorization to work on the tracks at the time the train passed", adds the prosecutor, who then focuses on the regulations in force: "We are also working to verify whether the overall procedure can be considered safe. What happened has made it clear that the guarantee mechanism was not sufficient to protect such delicate work in a dangerous place like that of the railway tracks".
The traffic light on platform 1, in fact, was regularly green at the entrance to the Brandizzo station and the drivers of the train in transit, without passengers, most likely a few minutes late according to the scheduled timetable, were not warned about the presence of the workers on the tracks. They are Marcello Pugliese, 52, and Francesco Gioffrè, 29, both from Turin, who this afternoon, heard in Ivrea as persons informed of the facts, reiterated their version to the prosecutors Giulia Nicodemi and Valentina Bossi. At the moment, no profiles of responsibility have emerged regarding their position.
According to the reconstruction carried out by the prosecutor, moreover, the workers had already been there for a few minutes and were already unbolting the tracks when the train arrived: "There was a risk of an even more serious situation, because if the convoy had passed after the removal of the tracks, planned during the maintenance work, it would have derailed", confirmed the prosecutor Viglione. Everything is at a standstill, for now, as regards the green light for the funerals of the five victims. Probably in the next few days, through some technical procedures, including DNA tests, an attempt will be made to proceed with the identification of the remains.
The day outside the judicial chapter at the site of the accident was spent between institutional visits, including that of Tino Magni, president of the Senate Commission of Inquiry into Working Conditions, Exploitation and Safety in the Workplace. For the relatives of the victims, there is still pain and calls for justice, while fundraisers are being mobilized from various quarters, such as the solidarity fund for the victims that the trade unions have asked RFI to create with the economic deductions from today's strike. A quota that RFI has decided to increase by paying an equivalent quota.
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