First a loud roar heard in several municipalities on the slopes of Vesuvius. Then a column of smoke visible even from a distance. And after a few minutes the sirens of ambulances to tear apart the quiet of an agricultural area between Ercolano and San Giorgio a Cremano. An illegal warehouse set up to make fireworks for the New Year's Eve celebrations went up in smoke.
The final toll speaks of three deaths, all young: it would be - but the condition of the bodies does not allow for official identification at the moment - an 18-year-old boy and two 26-year-old twins. The explosion in via Patacca in Ercolano, an isolated border area, among green areas dedicated to agriculture. The Carabinieri of the Ercolano station, the first ambulances and the firefighters arrive on the scene. It is soon discovered that the victims were not professionals but young people recruited for the occasion, almost certainly novices, to make fireworks in a storage house set up for the occasion last weekend. Today was their first day of work, but after the lunch break something must have gone wrong, probably due to the huge quantity of fireworks stored in that environment.
"The Carabinieri called us," reconstructs Mrs. Anna Campagna, a relative of one of the victims, "telling us that the fireworks factory where my son-in-law and the two girls I didn't know were had exploded. The Carabinieri notified us. My son-in-law had called me at 1 p.m. telling me that he was eating a sandwich with the two girls and that there were no other people with them. It was the first day of work for all three of them. From what we understood," adds the woman, "the factory was open between Friday and Sunday and today was the first actual day of work. I don't know who runs it, I only know that this morning they went to pick him up outside a bar to take him to work."
The mayor of Ercolano, Ciro Buonajuto, described the scene of destruction he found himself in: "A scene of devastation but also of great pain. They tell me - he is keen to tell journalists - that fireworks were made there, but neither the Municipality nor the other authorities ever received requests for authorization. What breaks my heart is that young people cannot die like this. We must teach them - concludes the mayor - that the main road, even if the longest, is that of legality and respect for the rules so that what happened tonight never happens again".
(Online Union)
