«A piece of roof fell on my back, I protected two little girls with my body»

The conditions of the three injured in the collapse of the attic in the swimming pool in Bari have improved and, above all, of Graziana Mazzone the thirty-four year old, assistant instructorwho had been working in for fifteen years pool with the task of accompanying the children younger children in the changing rooms to help them get dressed. The woman had been transported with a red code to the emergency room of the Polyclinic from where she was then transferred to the orthopedics department of the “Di Venere” hospital in Carbonara, where she underwent surgery to reduce a fracture in her ankle right.

The story

The operator, interviewed by Tgr-Puglia, reconstructed those tragic moments of the collapse experienced under the rubble. «I remember that at the time of the collapse, when I was by the pool I received a piece of the ceiling on my shoulder, I found myself with two little girls, one aged five and the other six years old, who had just finished their lessons in swimming, under me which, fortunately, I protected with my body. The two little ones kept telling me teacher help us, teacher help us, we are about to die. Luckily”, she continued in her story about Graziana Mazzone. «I had on my shoulders – she added – the mantle that had collapsed on me and I tried to keep it a little higher than the ground level in order to allow the two little girls to keep their heads out of the rubble so they could breathe. Despite the weight of the panel on my shoulders and the strong pain I felt in my broken ankle, I managed to call for help by alerting the rescuers with my radio transmitter. I immediately tried to reassure the girls, telling them to stay calm that I was there with them and that they could therefore stay calm because nothing else could happen except waiting for help.”

The young pool attendant also admitted that she was very scared, thinking of her son to whom she made her first phone call once she was saved. «I was very scared when the ceiling collapsed on me, then I steeled myself and thought that the important thing was to save those two little girls who were underneath me and who I was protecting with my body. At that moment the maternal spirit prevailed in me, thinking that instead of those children there could be my son and for this reason I showed all my courage to be of help to those two girls, in these cases we must not turn away part. As soon as I emerged from the rubble I immediately phoned my eleven-year-old son to reassure him because he told me he knew he had a brave mother.”

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