MODUGNO – “Culpable burning of waste under company management”. This is the crime charged in competition with Michele Terrone and Luigi Bernardino Verzillo, respectively sole director and head of the company prevention and protection service of Recuperi Pugliese, the waste storage plant where a “significant” fire occurred on June 6, the third in the last year and a half.
The accusation is contained in the precautionary seizure order for part of the structure notified in recent days by the Carabinieri, following the first investigations ordered by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, photographic surveys and a note from the fire brigade “from which emerges – as stated in the precautionary measure – the inadequacy of the system and the risks for the continuation of the activity identified at present as abusive from the point of view of fire prevention”, taking into account – according to the prosecutor Baldo Pisani – that the fire prevention adaptation works established in agreement with the fire brigade command in September 2023, after the second fire, have not yet been completed. Moreover, according to the Bari investigators, the clarifications of the company “regarding the mitigation of the risk through the adoption of measures cannot be considered sufficient guarantee”. This is why it was deemed necessary to proceed with the urgent seizure of some of the areas intended for the storage and depot of waste (those substantially affected by the latest fire and the two previous ones) within the site in Contrada Gammarola, in the industrial area of Modugno, which nevertheless remains operational.
The plant stores plastic and paper packaging and, as in the previous fires in January and September 2023, the latest one – the cause of which is still being investigated but it is likely to have started in a border area outside the site – destroyed tons of waste piled up in the yard. When the firefighters, having put out the flames, carried out a survey of the state of the place, they highlighted that “the area was not completely delimited by fire-resistant bulkheads that separated it from other neighboring storage areas” and that “it was not protected by any fire-extinguishing system”.
The long and robust tongues of fire that for hours, twenty days ago, affected the external square, did not touch the building and the internal spaces and, fortunately, did not cause injuries or intoxication among the workers who were at work at the time, but according to the investigators the company must still be charged with “the failure to implement the procedures aimed at fire prevention checks by the fire brigade and to obtain the license to operate for fire prevention purposes following the changes/expansion made to the previously authorized activity” and “the absence of measures to prevent and extinguish fires and to protect the safety of workers”.
Beyond the ongoing criminal proceedings, the firefighters have listed a series of requirements “in order to protect the safety of all users of the activity and workers and for the purpose of preserving the assets”. Within 90 days the company will have to “comply with the procedures” to adapt the fire prevention qualification and, in the meantime, “in order to be able to continue the exercise of the activity in sufficient safety conditions”, it will have to “immediately have a a qualified professional makes an overall assessment of the need or otherwise to implement temporary management and emergency measures aimed at mitigating the risks resulting from any ongoing discrepancies with respect to fire prevention regulations”. According to the investigators, that is, “the activity, at present, is not carried out in safe conditions”.
