Brandizzo's mystery: safety devices out of order and the lack of "green light" for the works
The system that warns if the track is busy and the protocols of the company involved are under investigation. A former Si.gi.fer employee: «We often started maintenance early, it always happened like this»There are several "blind spots" of the Brandizzo tragedy , where 5 workers died overwhelmed by a train while doing maintenance along the railway. The investigations now focus on the safety procedures which, beyond human error, should have been triggered to avoid the irreparable .
The investigation, coordinated by prosecutors Giulia Nicodemi and Valentina Bossi, insists on what should happen in the event of inattention, on what are the "life-saving protocols" envisaged. According to the statements of an investigator following an inspection of the scene of the massacre, " the safety short circuit has not started ". The reference is to the "Cbds", the track circuits that should signal the presence of trains on the section. The system also works in the case of work on the track: but none of this has happened.
Added to this is a "consolidated" practice of the company that was managing the maintenance. To tell it, as reported by La Stampa, a former worker of the Si.gi.fer of Borgo Vercelli, Antonio Veneziano. “ We often started work early . When a train was late we got on with the work. There was a regulation, i.e. the narrowing of the track, to be made with a convoy expected outside the correct time of passage. We started to work, we unscrewed the bolts. After that, before the convoys passed, they would throw us off the tracks. There were six or seven of us for each group but in those cases there were those who watched their backs. The other night went in a different way: they were all on the embankment».
His testimony was also confirmed by other colleagues . It was not an official “nulla osta” that kicked off the operations but the ok from the boss who «verbally says that “we can do it”. He does it not when a press release arrives but when the trains have stopped running: they all do this ». At the moment there are two suspects: Antonio Massa, 46, from Grugliasco (Turin) RFI employee at the construction site where the victims worked and Andrea Girardin Gibin, 52, from Borgo Vercelli, site manager of Sigifer and colleague of the 5 workers.
Meanwhile, a " silent procession " was organized today in Borgo Vercelli in respect of the families of the victims. They will be remembered one by one: Kevin Laganà, Michael Zanera, Giuseppe Sorvillo, Giuseppe Aversa and Giuseppe Lombardo.
(Unionine/vf)