“There is a bomb on board.” The alert came from a web message sent to the State Railways. Moments of fear at the Santa Maria Novella station in Florence. Yesterday afternoon, Wednesday 12 June, an alarm was raised for a possible explosive device that would have been present on the Frecciarossa train 9540 which left Naples and headed for Milan, stopped on track 9 in Florence.
Bomb alert on the Frecciarossa Naples-Milan in Florence: what happened
In order to carry out the necessary checks, the judicial authority suspended traffic on platforms 8, 9, 10, 11 from Santa Maria Novella with high-speed trains, as broadcast over the station’s loudspeakers: the trains made the stops in Florence Rifredi and Campo di Marte, instead of in the central station of the Tuscan capital.
The railway police immediately began checks. Frecciarossa train 9540 was stopped in Florence and evacuated to carry out the necessary checks. All passengers with their luggage were taken off the train, while bomb squad, railway police and state police canine units boarded the convoy. During the clean-up operations, security personnel checked the seats, aisles, bathrooms and overhead bins. The tracks close to the one where the train under investigation was stopped were also closed off. Then it was discovered that it was a false alarm.
Numerous cancellations were made, especially on high-speed trains. The investigations by the police ended with negative results: there were no bombs on the train, on board which the politician and former Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema was also travelling. High-speed trains resumed normal circulation after several hours, albeit with several minutes’ delay.
