Fire at the Meres of Pianodardine in Avellino, there are four suspects and the new seizure of the warehouse which was partially destroyed in the serious fire that occurred last October 19th. This was made known by the prosecutor Domenico Airoma. Today, staff of the Flying Squad of the Avellino Police Headquarters carried out the order of the Judge for the preliminary investigations of the Court with which it was ordered the preventive seizure of an industrial warehouse of the factory at the request of the Prosecutor’s Office, converting the evidentiary seizure ordered following the fire that occurred on 19 October 2023.
The flames damaged one of the 2600 square meter warehouses in Pianodardine. In the fire, all the equipment and materials inside the warehouse were completely destroyed. The load-bearing structures of the shed suffered serious damage, even if no collapse phenomena occurred, but intense work by the Avellino firefighters was necessary to limit the damage to the square and to the outside. From the results of a consultancy ordered by the Avellino Prosecutor’s Office, the methods, cause, dynamics and development of the fire were reconstructed.
The fire apparently broke out due to “thermal phenomena associated with electricity (attributable to a short circuit or a failure of the machine or other components)”. Excluding malicious intent, the legal representatives of the Company and the designer of the variant of the roof covering project are registered in the register of suspects. Some modifications to the roof of the warehouse caused the short circuit and the resulting fire. These are the conclusions reached by the consultants of the Prosecutor’s Office led by prosecutor Domenico Airoma. According to the accusation, the suspects «due to their fault consisting in negligence, imprudence and incompetence as well as in the violation of the legislation on safety in the workplace, would have contributed to causing a fire of vast proportions or in any case the spread of the flames in the external square and inside one of the factory’s warehouses.”
The investigations carried out so far «allow us to state that the roof covering of the shed was made of panels with polyurethane material inside, without the installation of 18 smoke and heat evacuators with automatic opening in case of temperatures above 68 degrees, devices that fall within the active fire protection measures whose implementation would have prevented the spread of the fire” writes the prosecutor Airoma. From the documentation it emerged that, during the execution of the works, a change in the type of roofing was envisaged, from the original solution to that of “sandwich” panels with a row of polycarbonate panels. The changes made to the roofing system which had changed the fire reaction characteristics of the materials and also involved the modification of the ventilation and active protection systems “which had not previously been subjected to a new evaluation by the Fire Brigade” according to what was reconstructed by the investigators. Furthermore, the commissioning of the industrial activity inside the warehouse «had taken place without having presented the SCIA report for fire safety purposes, or in the absence of the necessary “Fire Prevention Certificate” (CPI) and the necessary checks aimed at ensure compliance with the provisions of the fire prevention legislation, also for the protection of workers”, claims the Avellino Prosecutor’s Office.
Furthermore, the firefighters would have verified the failure to implement the Natural Smoke and Heat Exhaust System, foreseen in the project but not implemented, whose installation would have prevented the fire from spreading to the entire structure of the warehouse. “The violations found – concludes the prosecutor Airoma – left the warehouse without the safeguards that could have ensured a sufficient level of safety in the workplace”.
