LAGONEGRO – “A loud bang. Then darkness.” “The scene we found when we arrived was that of a bomb that had just exploded.” These are the dramatic testimonies of a firefighter (off duty at the time) and the 118 doctor, given in yesterday’s hearing at the Lagonegro Court. The trial for the death of the young Giovanna Pastoressa, 28, continues. Both, for different reasons, have recounted the disaster that struck Lauria on December 13, 2019, when part of the roof of the Palazzetto dello Sport broke off and fell onto the gym where Giovanna Pastoressa was also training. There are 9 defendants, accused to varying degrees of manslaughter and negligent personal injury. There are those responsible for the procedure, the structural designer, the tester, the owner and sole director of the company awarded the contract, the designer of the laminated wood structure that covered the building, the legal representative of the company that installed the laminated structure and the designer of the work.
There was also a firefighter in the gym that evening. On what was a “normal winter evening”, as he specified, the man, off duty, was training when, suddenly, everything collapsed. He was the first, together with the owner of the gym, to notice Giovanna and come to her aid. The young woman was on the floor, still on the treadmill, unconscious. Then 118 arrived. «It was all dark, the firefighters were making our way through the rubble – said Dr. Alessandra Palagano who had just started her shift when the call came – Dr. Pastoressa had a deep wound in the occipital region, the skull was completely crushed. We stabilized her and then transported her immediately to the emergency room in Lagonegro.” Giovanna’s parents, Domenico and Maria Cristina, were also in the courtroom, followed by the lawyers Raffaele Melfi and Antonio Donadio and accompanied by the Libera association. Furthermore, among others, the consultants of part of the Pastoressa family, the engineers Raffaele Landolgo and Mario D’Aniello, were also interviewed. Their report substantially confirms what has already been described by the prosecutor’s experts.
“From the analysis of the documentation filed and the structural checks conducted – we read in the summary presented in the courtroom – it was found that if the fork had been armed as per the project drawings, it would have been able to resist a wind speed more than double the design value and the lifting of the roof would not have occurred”. Which in simple terms, means that as built, that part of the roof of the sports hall would not have resisted even the force of the wind which, according to the regulations, must be foreseen in the design phase.
