Collapsed buildings in Ravanusa, four other bodies found: the pregnant woman also died in the ninth month
The death toll rises to seven, as people continue to dig tirelessly for the last two missing. Selene Pagliarello was due to give birth next week
Four bodies of the six missing in the explosion in Ravanusa, in the province of Agrigento, were found by the fire brigade, who dug all night. The bodies were under the rubble of the four-story building that collapsed due to a gas leak from the city pipeline.
The death toll rises to seven: the latest are Selene Pagliarello, the 31-year-old pregnant in the ninth month, and her husband Giuseppe Carmina, who had gone to visit the latter's parents, Angelo Carmina and Enza Zagarrio, who lived on the third floor .
Firefighters and volunteers continue to dig nonstop to find the other two people trapped in rubble, debris, broken glass. In Ravanusa on Saturday evening an entire block was obliterated by the explosion: four houses collapsed, three were gutted.
SELENE AND GIUSEPPE - Selene Pagliarello and Giuseppe Carmina, her nurse in the emergency room of the San Giovanni di Dio hospital in Agrigento, him a worker, didn't even have to be in that apartment. They had passed by to greet his parents, Angelo Carmina, 72, and Maria Crescenza Zagarrio, 69, whom everyone in the village called Enza.
A final farewell before giving birth, as the nine months would expire next week. Someone, says the head of the Sicilian civil protection Salvo Codina, hypothesized that Selene was on the street for a phone call when everything exploded. Unfortunately she was at home too.
THE INVESTIGATION - The Agrigento prosecutor Luigi Patronaggio has opened a file for disaster and manslaughter and in the coming days will acquire all the documentation relating to the gas distribution network, the seizure of the area affected by the explosion - currently 10 thousand square meters , but the prosecutor himself said that it could become wider - and, in all likelihood, the registration in the register of suspects of the first names of technicians and administrators who for various reasons may have responsibilities regarding the gas network, also to give them the opportunity to participate in all unrepeatable assessments.
As for the dynamics, there would have been an accumulation of methane gas in the subsoil, the investigators explain, which lasted for at least the entire day on Saturday. In the next few days, underlined Patronaggio, "a careful mapping of the places" will be carried out: we start from "a methane leak but we do not exclude any tracks". The prosecutor has already appointed a technical consultant and in the next few hours a new inspection will be carried out with the firefighters, precisely to try to circumscribe the causes of the gas leak.
One of the issues facing the magistrates is whether there has been an underestimation of the danger. One of the survivors of the massacre, Calogero Bonanno, spoke of the smell of gas in recent days.
"Some neighbors told me they could smell gas - he said -. If that's true, there was unforgivable negligence." A version confirmed by the municipal councilor Giuseppe Sortino: "In the last seven days - he says - I know that several citizens have complained about the smell of gas in the area we call via delle Scuole Don Bosco in the Masciminici district, where the tragedy took place, but no one intervened. . Both the mayor and the gas technicians have not received any reports ".
(Unioneonline / D)
