A 71 year old on vacation was overwhelmed by a landslide on the Piacenza Apennines and it is died buried by rocks. It happened on the afternoon of Thursday 27 June between Curletti di Ferriere and Cattaragna, in Val D’Aveto, an area hit by strong bad weather in recent days. Under the rocks Emilio Franco Pezzottaoriginally from Gorlago (Bergamo) and resident in Palazzolo sull’Oglio (Brescia): he was in Curletti to spend the holidays in his second houseIt seems that the 71-year-old had gone to to make wood for the stove and that he was busy in mowing operations at the time of the collapse: according to initial hypotheses, with a small chainsaw he would have tried to cut some branches above a stream, near a sharp bend. Suddenly the landslide came off the slope and overwhelmed him: the elderly man was crushed under the boulders and earth.
The rescues
The wife was with him: she saw her husband remain buried under the debris and called i rescue. The intervention of the fire brigade teams from the provincial command of Piacenza and the Bobbio detachment was immediate. The 118 Operations Center of Parma has activated the nursing staff on station in Farini, the operators of the Red Cross of Marsaglia, the Alpine Rescue and the air ambulance which took off from the Ospedale Maggiore of the ducal city. In the meantime, come on Bologna it was taken off the helicopter Drago flew to Piacenza to take on board two specialized Usar (urban search and rescue) firefighters and left again to reach the scene of the accident. The situation required more reinforcements and the helicopter had to return to Piacenza to take on board five more firefighters and take them to the scene.
Hours to extract the body
To support the rescue operations, a team of firefighters was mobilised by the Piacenza provincial fire brigade command. team with an excavator. The police were also at the scene of the tragedy to carry out all the necessary investigations. Rescue operations were particularly difficult: the man’s body remained buried underneath three cubic meters of debris and rocks. It took several hours to extract the old man and extract him. There was nothing that could be done for him.
