In recent days, almost two years after the closure of the investigations, the GUP Ileana Ramundo has sent 13 of the 18 under investigation for the fire to trial for negligent disaster and other crimes, without victims or injuries, but with compensation requests for tens of millions of euros from the tenants left homeless, who on 29 August 2021 had the 18 floors of the Torre dei Moro in Milan were destroyed.
The news, which involved important builders and designers from Lombardy, including the Moro family and their entourage, was obviously picked up by most newspapers, and ended up overshadowing another piece of news, which emerged during the skirmishes between prosecution and defense, and objectively much more important, or rather, impressive.
Let’s say that it’s not exactly like in the proverbial, ‘everyone observes the finger and no one observes the moon’, because in this case the moon is huge, yes, but the finger is also cumbersome. However, it was enough to take a step away and, in the frame of the trial of those allegedly responsible, in various capacities, for the fire, both would have entered: the finger, that is, precisely, the announcement of the indictment; and the moon, that is confirms that the killer materials responsible for the Viale Antonini fire are the same, in type and brand, which they blew up the 14-storey complex in Valencia, where 10 people died in Februaryand with reasonable certainty, even if to be demonstrated, also the Grenfell Tower in London, where 72 people lost their lives in 2017, including the young Italian architects Gloria Trevisan and Marco Gottardo.
The fact that it has gone almost unnoticed is undoubtedly paradoxical, because of the two it is the one that deserves the most attention, since it concerns tens of thousands of people who face the same fate, in Italy and abroad: dying poisoned by the gases released from the burnt plastic of their apartments, as happened, in fact, in Valencia and Grenfell, and if not in Milan it was only because in the middle of summer, on Sunday, and in the afternoon, the Tower was almost empty.
Everything starts, experts explain, fromuse of the panels as elements for the so-called sailsa very fashionable solution both for furnishing facades and for creating, at a distance of about one meter from the external walls, passive ventilation, capable of heating the building in summer and cooling it in winter.
Exactly this ‘draft’ effect in the cavity, combined with the extreme combustibility of the plastic material of too thin panels, which also lower the melting temperature of the aluminum layer, can, however, transform a cigarette butt, or a short circuit, into a massacre. Especially when, among the many qualities available, the choice of architects, builders and suppliers, under the distracted eyes of those in the public who should monitor the works, falls on cheaper and inferior productsas would have happened in Milan.
According to the prosecutor Marina Petruzzellathe 13 sent back to trial, despite being aware of the risk and precedents, would have employed Alucoil’s Larsen PE panels: Now they are no longer in the catalogue, but they were there at the time, and they were undoubtedly the worst in the house. The same Spanish company, in the attached instructions, hypocritically advised against use them in buildings of no more than two floorseven though he knew very well where and how they were used, as revealed by the extensive correspondence with the Italian sales agents (among other things, when asked why exactly those ‘two floors’, some of the suspects responded with admirable cynicism that it is the maximum height that is believed to allow tenants to save yourself by lowering yourself from the outside).
Moreover, that the fireproof characteristics of the panels were equal to those of a match soaked in petrol was clear from the kinetics of the fire both in Milan, in Valencia and in London: in all three cases, and in many others in the world further away from the Western spotlight, but well known to the experts, the flames can be observed spreading from one floor to another passing from the outside, and with such a speed as to frustrate any rescue.
But if until yesterday we could talk about solid clues, the definitive confirmation that even in the case of the buildings burned in Valencia the sails were made with Larsen PE, and not with the many other imitations on the market, now comes from a source of which one can doubt it: in recent days, this has been said by the same Italian lawyers of Alucoil. In an attempt, actually a bit clumsy, to lighten the position of the two Spanish managers they defended, by pointing out to the Milanese investigators the scant consideration given by their Spanish colleagues, at least so far, to the panel factor in the Valencia fire, they called them by name and surname: Larsen PE. In this way, without wanting to, they admitted the truth: a brand, a cause, an effect, the flames that flare up and burn in a few tens of minutes down to the last cubic centimeter, without anyone being able to do anything about it.
As for the Grenfell tragedy, to be able to put two and two together, or rather three, we will have to wait at least until 2028, the last of the numerous deadlines set by the United Kingdom Court with a fogey caution that seems to mock the number of victims and the calls for justice . But beyond the judicial issues, the fundamental aspect of this story has to do with the banal citizens’ right to live in safe homes and not in traps destined to burn like haystacks. A fact that we all take for granted, but which the Milanese prosecutor’s office denied from the first steps of the investigation, when the simple reading of the customer archives and USB sticks seized from Alucoil’s Italian distributors made it possible to identify dozens of Italian buildings furnished with the infamous Larsen PE.
The list includes: the Aruba Data Center in Ponte San Pietro in Bergamo; the E3 Est building, in Piazza Gae Aulenti in Milan; the Acef Pharmaceutical Chemical Company of Fiorenzuola d’Arda; the new headquarters of Transfer Oil in Parma; the Moda Srl Twin Set headquarters in Carpi; the New Cruise Terminal of Civitavecchia; the Breaking Hotel at the Giulianova Marche toll booth; the New Aosta Airport Terminal; the CNS Report New Juventus Stadium; Ostiglia Engineering; the Focchi Cantori project of Quattro Ospedali in Tuscany; the Guala Closures Group of Alessandria; Italmontaggi Home Furnishings of Cornedo Vicentino; the My Hotel in Bologna; the Sky Line Le Fontane Shopping Center in Catanzaro.
Two years ago, the deputy prosecutor Marina Petruzzella had informed this in writing the prosecutors concerned and the general directorate of the fire brigade. In the meantime, to demonstrate that it was not an alarmist protagonism on the part of the magistrate, the usual Larsen PE panels had caused fires, fortunately not destructive, but such as to require their immediate removal, atSan Filippo al Ponte hospital and the Una Hotel in Varese, moreover, the only city in which the Prefect had already ordered checks and dismantling of the most dangerous roofs. Faced with the silence of others, we must ask ourselves where the traditional inertia of the institutions ends and where, instead, the fear of discovering that killer materials are much more widespread of what we think and that the various house bonuses, with theirs coats of synthetic polymers, may have greatly worsened the vulnerability of our homes to firethe. Filiberto Lembo, professor of restoration technology at Roma Tre University and expert for the Milan Prosecutor’s Office, has been repeating it and writing it for some time in his books: “It is not far-fetched to argue that in Europe at least one fire a day is caused by these poor-quality building materials. , or outlawed, or illegally certified by compliant agencies’. But is it risky, then, to imagine that the next bonus will be for the fire escapes?
Further article on the subject: Valencia fire, there is a thread that links it to the fires in London and Milan
Maurizio Menicucci – Journalist, author of investigations, television documentaries
