Silvano Tollardo, 66, his wife Carolina De Luca, 63, and their son Antonio are the victims of the massacre in via Fra Galgario 8 in Milan. The prosecutor’s office has opened a case for manslaughter in relation to the fire that started after the explosion of a car parked in the garage on the mezzanine floor of the building. The bang caused a fire which immediately spread to the tires and flammable material in the workshop. The smoke spread through the six-story building: the Tollardos lived on the third. The other homes were unoccupied. Some tenants tried to escape, but they didn’t. And this will have to explain the magistrates’ investigation. The owner of the workshop from which the flames started, Fabrizio Ghiani, will be among those registered in the register of suspects as a guarantee for all the necessary investigations.
The fire
The deputy prosecutor of Milan, Tiziana Siciliano, was present on site. The most probable hypothesis, explains today the Milanese edition of Corriere della Sera, is that the smoke somehow began to stun the three occupants of the house from the first moment. And that intoxication has thus blocked them. Perhaps, when they realized the danger, they tried to help each other. The fire broke out around 7pm. The bodies of the Tollardo family were found an hour later. According to Siciliano, the flames started due to the presence of petrol in the car being repaired in front of the workshop. Speaking to those present immediately after the event, Ghiani said that in the workshop they were «working with diesel fuel. I have no idea how the flames started. But then the explosions started.” With him there was a worker who is currently hospitalized in code yellow at the Milan Polyclinic for burns.
The causes and dynamics
What type of work was going on in the workshop? This will be the first question the investigators will have to answer. One of the first hypotheses on the causes of the fire is the possible incompetence in the use of fuel in an engine under repair. Then we will also try to understand if the premises respected the laws on workplace safety and prevention. «Fabrizio stammeringly explained to me: “I was fiddling with the diesel, I don’t know what happened. It was a normal, routine job. It was the last thing I was fixing before closing the shop. But suddenly the flames started, I can’t explain what could have happened. Then the explosions started,'” a witness told the newspaper.
