“A very unpleasant episode”. This is how the then CEO of the Ferrovie dello Stato, Mauro Moretti, defined the Viareggio massacre during a hearing in the Senate, sparking indignation from the victims’ families and the entire city. Now those words, so out of place, so strident, have become the title of a book by journalists Giovanni Lorenzini and Francesco Bertolucci, published by L’Ancora, the proceeds of which will be donated entirely to the association of the victims’ families, The World I Would Like. What happened on the evening of June 29, 2009 and how was it possible. And then: could it happen again? These are the questions that the volume aims to answer, trying to shed light on the train accident in which 32 people lost their lives.
Railway safety in Italy
The two authors, journalists who followed the news from the first minutes, reconstruct the main stages of the story, with the judicial proceedings, the sentences of the five levels of judgment and insights into the safety of the Italian railway network, to make it clear how and why it happened arrived at the accident and what the current situation is. A central topic for the near future given that by 2030, in the name of the green transition, the number of freight trains carrying dangerous substances on the European railway network – from LPG to nuclear waste – is destined to practically double.
