Verceia (Sondrio) – They will take it still a few days before being able to restore railway traffic on the Colico–Chiavenna, line closed in the stretch between Dubino and Novate Mezzola due to a detachment of some boulders in Verceia occurred on Saturday evening. A closure that caused inconvenience, despite Trenord having promptly prepared a replacement service. But at least on Sunday not everything went smoothly immediately, as a girl from Valchiavenna said on one of her social channels.
“As usual, news of an announced disaster – says the young woman -, not even in India or Africa have I seen such disastrous and badly organized trains. Sunday morning in Colico there was no bus replacement and therefore I had to wait two hours and get it at 12.53. Needless to say, too the Colico–Tirano buses they were packed and had to leave around 70 passengers, many of them tourists, on the ground.”
The large stones, most likely due to the heavy rains these days and in general in the last period, they rolled down the valley and some went on to invade the route of the former SS 36, now used as a cycle path, in the section near the Mina tunnel. A large boulder touched the railway line and stopped on the wall that delimits the line Colico – Chiavenna without invading it and therefore without causing damage to the tracks.
“The area was immediately cordoned off (following an order from the new mayor Alessio Della Bitta) and banned traffic – he told us Davide Trussoni, president of the Valchiavenna Mountain Community – to obviously avoid the occurrence of accidents. Subsequently, the necessary checks were carried out, with geologists and technicians, to define what to do and begin the necessary works to make the area safe as soon as possible. Today (yesterday for those reading, ed) temporary protections with geo blocks have been placed to ensure maximum security. It will be necessary to plan structural interventions for the consolidation of the rock face and therefore to avoid further collapses of boulders”. Meanwhile today the rock blasting and the service will continue with replacement buses.
