Pavia, two workers dead at work. Run over and killed by toxic gas cloud

Villanterio (Pavia), May 28 –

Still victims at work. Two workers died today around 12 after being hit by vapors probably containing ammonia. It happened to Villanterio, in the province of Pavia around 12.30, in the Digima company. They intervened on the spot an ambulance, an automedical, the firefighters and the carabinieri. The Lombard Areu makes it known. On the spot there are several teams of fire fighters and also the nucleo Nbc (Nuclear bacteriological chemical).

To tragically lose their lives they were Andrea Lusini, 51 years old, residing in Linardo but originally from Tuscany e Alessandro Brigo, Just turned 50 today, residing in Copiano, a town in the province of Pavia, where he was well known as a volunteer of the Civil Protection. Father of two boys aged 16 and 18 and married to Laura Romagnoli, municipal councilor and pharmacist of the country. Brigo had been working at Digima for 3 years.

According to initial findings and reconstructions by firefighters and technicians, the accident was caused by the malfunction of a plant inside a processing tank. The rupture of a valve as a result of which a cloud of toxic gas would have been released (the firefighters found a high concentration of hydrogen sulphide). One of the two workers would have felt ill. One of the two workers, who was next to the tub, felt ill. The colleague immediately intervened to help him, but in turn he lost consciousness. When the 118 operators arrived on the spot, there was now nothing more to be done. The incident took place inside the company Digima which deals with the collection and processing of by-products of slaughter. In particular, bovine tallow, pork lard and meat meal. Leather collection and trade. The company is active (reads the site) in the provinces of Lodi, Milan, Pavia, Piacenza.

Also there job security was one of the main themes of the demonstration of the unions staged this morning in front of Montecitorio to raise awareness of the need, first of all, of an extension of the redundancy block. “We must invest in safety in the workplace, this cannot be considered a cost but a great investment”. The said general secretary of the CISL, Luigi Sbarra. “Even today we record a huge tragedy, which extends the list of a daily massacre that cannot be stopped. We continue to call them accidents, but they have nothing bumpy or accidental, they are deaths announced within a system. which sees too many black holes on controls, prevention, training and compliance with existing laws and regulations. All the institutions in charge must intervene, even the time of mourning is over, we must act and quickly because in 2021 we cannot die at work. Let’s stop the massacres at work, saying enough to a system that puts profit before health “, they said Tina Balì e Andrea Gambillara of the national secretariat Flai CGIL commenting on the tragic accident in the province of Pavia.

The president Attilio Fontana, on behalf of the entire council, expresses the condolences of the Lombardy region for the accident at work that caused the death of two men in Villanterio. “We are close to their families in this time of pain,” says the governor. “These are unacceptable facts. Also in recent days, we met with all the Prefects of Lombardy and the institutional subjects involved, in various capacities, on the issue of safety in the workplace – concludes Fontana – to identify further useful tools to counter these very serious episodes “.

“Regarding the accident that today led to the death of two workers in a company in Villanterio, I started the necessary initiatives to acquire all the elements to understand the causes and responsibilities, in order to evaluate the hypothesis of an investigation of the commission. “Thus in a note Senator Gianclaudio Bressa, President of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into working conditions in Italy, exploitation and safety in public and private workplaces.

In 2020 the fatal accidents at work they were well 1.270. Cas if a small Italian village had been canceled due to workplace injuries. According to the data provided by Inail – the National Insurance Institute for accidents at work – there were 1,089 deaths for the same reason in 2019. A third of deaths and nearly a quarter of workplace injury reports are due to the coronavirus and this cannot be ignored. But in 2020, many businesses were closed for over a month. Yet the dead have not diminished. In 2020 there were 271 deaths from voluntary homicide, of which 112 women, according to Istat. That is six times less than the deaths at work. People still die of work in Italy, it is useless to hide it. One continues to lose one’s life by doing what in life gives sustenance. In 2019, according to Istat, the deaths due to road accidents, within a month of the accident, were about 3,200. The data concerning deaths from domestic accidents, according to 2017 and according to Ispesl, were 8,000. The idea is that in the following years, however, the trend was not particularly different. In the case of domestic accidents, however, it must be taken into account that sometimes the step from homicide to domestic accident can be short. In fact, there are several cases of staging, or modification of the crime scene, which can hardly be unmasked.

Fatal accidents that in the first quarter of the year are up compared to the previous three months. The complaints of accident at work with outcome mortal submitted to Inail by April have been 306, 26 more than to 280 registered in the first quarter of 2020 (+ 9.3%) and in line with those of the first quarter of 2019 (303 fatal events). The comparison between 2020 and 2021, as mentioned, however, requires caution, as the data of the deadly reports of the monthly open data, more than those of the complaints as a whole, are provisional and heavily influenced by the pandemic, with the result of not counting a significant number of ‘late’ fatal reports from Covid-19 contagion, in particular of the month of March 2020, entered the archives only in the months following the photograph taken on April 30, 2020. It should also be noted that the deaths caused by Covid-19 occur after a more or less long period of time elapsed from date of contagion.