Milan, 18 June. “A serious incident with three people dead and over 200 injured, a complex reconstruction picture involving one of the major Italian railway infrastructure companies”. Thus begins the indictment of prosecutor Leonardo Lesti who, together with his colleague Maura Ripamonti, is reconstructing in the courtroom, before the judges of the Milan court, the Pioltello accident of 25 January 2018, when a regional train went off the tracks. In the dock is the former CEO of RFI Maurizio Gentile, on trial with others including former managers, employees and technicians of RFI, who must respond, in various capacities, for negligent train disaster, manslaughter and negligent injury.
In the reconstruction of the investigators, from the inspection of the railway headquarters “a break in the surface of the rail was found on the track” which will become the ‘zero point’ for the investigation. According to the prosecutor’s office – some photos of the Pioltello railway section are shown in the courtroom – that missing piece, about 23 centimetres, thrown “several meters away” is the cause of the derailment and thanks to a camera pointing at the railway section it emerges that “The problems that that joint was causing had lasted for a few days: sparks were generated when the train passed, the first sparks already starting from January 17th, they continue and increase in intensity and frequency” with the increase in erosion of the joint.
On the day of the fatal derailment “the sparks are contained as the first carriages pass, then there is almost a flame” while the convoy travels at “140 kilometers an hour”, finally “no more sparks” because “the joint is blown” and the last carriages no longer travel on the tracks. “Already on the basis of the very first investigations, the certainty comes almost immediately that the hypothesis of the derailment occurs at ‘zero point’, there is in fact no damage on the previous section” concludes Lesti.
