Carabinieri believe broken alarm behind worker deaths

Workers outside the Lamina plant. Image: Il Fatto Quotidiano.

ROME - Investigators for the Carabinieri believe that a broken alarm and a leaking nitrogen valve were responsible for the deaths of four workers at the Lamina metalworking plant in Milan on Tuesday.

 Members of the public have been lighting candles and laying flowers outside the factory as investigators try to reconstruct what happened.

 It's believed that two of the men, Marco Santamaria and Arrigo Barbieri, had gone to fix a broken alarm in one of the factory's ovens, not realising that a wider gas leak had occurred. Il Fatto Quotidiano reported that the men were not wearing protective masks, since they considered the problem to be limited to a sensor in the oven.

 They were discovered unconscious on the floor by two other workers, Giuseppe Setzu and Giancarlo Barbieri, the brother of Arrigo. The first two workers and Setzu were declared dead at the scene, while Giancarlo was rushed to hospital. Milan's San Raffaele Hospital declared that he too had died on Thursday evening.

 Alfonso Giocondo and Costantino Giampiero, two fellow workers raised the alarm. They too had inhaled gas but their conditions had improved by Thursday.

 One worker at the plant, Pasquale Arcamone, was dumbfounded as to the cause. "I have worked for this firm for 28 years and it has never happened. The firm was always very careful regarding health, I don't understand how it could have happened. A month ago they even conducted checks on the sensors. But today, the alarm didn't sound."

 The Attorney for Milan, Tiziana Siciliano, stated that those responsible at Lamina for the safety of the plant would likely be charged.  

 Italy's work accident fatality rate is one of the worst in Europe. In Aug 2017, the Istituto Nazionale per L'Assicurazione contro gli Infortuni sul Lavoro (INAIL) reported that the number of deaths from workplace incidents had risen 5.2 per cent in the first seven months of the year, compared with the same period in 2016.

tw