RIETI – We are searching and digging through the testimonies to establish “what” caused the explosion of a fuel tank inside the IP petrol station, along the Salaria, on 5 December 2018, costing the lives of two people, the fireman Stefano Colasanti and a passing motorist, Andrea Maggi, who had stopped to witness what was happening and was hit by flames. The policemen of the Poggio Mirteto garrison and the Montelibretti detachment parade into the courtroom, give testimony at times painful before the president Carlo Sabatini and the lawyers of the parties, because some of them were injured in the explosion and, in addition to the burns, they retain those moments a painful memory.
The witness. One, in particular, who intervened with another colleague after the alarm raised by Colasanti, retraced the moments preceding the accident: «At the beginning it was just us and, while Stefano was pressing the accelerator inside the fire-fighting vehicle to increase the pressure necessary to release the water, we carried out the first launches to cool the LPG container using the hose. Then, I never saw him again, because evidently he had got out of the vehicle (a small Aps tanker that Colasanti had taken to the workshop in Montelibretti for a repair – ed.) and immediately after the arrival of the Poggio Mirteto team there was the explosion”. But from the testimony also emerges the regret for how much more could have been done: «If we had intervened in greater numbers, it was possible to activate a larger pump which would have guaranteed a greater jet of water compared to the hose, which is a small flexible tube, but it took time to assemble it and more men, but we were left alone until the Poggio Mirteto team arrived. At that point there was no time to do anything else because shortly afterwards the tank exploded.”
The reconstruction. Reconstruction that to the lawyers Luca Conti And Francesco Tavani, defenders of the plant managers (Paolo Pettirossi and Anna Maria Niro, wife and husband), accused of manslaughter and negligent disaster together with the driver of the tanker, Gianni Casentini, serves to understand whether the means and men present on site were sufficient to deal with the fire. The purpose of their questions, also posed to the other police officers, appeared more than evident: to deny the prosecutor’s thesis which links the responsibility for the two deaths (also) to the failure to implement the safety rules to be adopted during fuel transfer operations, consisting of placing fire extinguishers around the area to be used in case of emergency. But if the water drops carried out with the fire brigade’s tanker proved insufficient, could fire extinguishers alone have prevented a fire of that magnitude? A reflection that was also accompanied by other testimonies given on the lack of connection between the tank and the underground tank of the vapor phase return pipe which serves to avoid, during refueling, dangerous steam overpressures and, therefore, the leakage of the LPG.
The consultancy. In this case, the public prosecutor Francia refers to the advice of the office expert and to what was reported by an eyewitness: «I was at the petrol station bar to get coffee and looking in the direction of the fuel pump I saw that only a hose was attached “, a statement contradicted by a second witness, Pettirossi’s brother, who however was not present that day: “It is impossible to see the point where the tank was located from the bar, because the view is covered by the car washing system, by a booth and by a bulkhead that protects against splashes.” Thus we will continue to dig to find answers to the tragedy, and a new expert opinion ordered by the court cannot be ruled out either, but this will only be known after the depositions of the parties’ consultants.
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