A train struck and killed five workers carrying out nighttime maintenance work near Turin in northern Italy. The incident sparked outrage from unions on Thursday, who denounced a lack of investment and violations of safety regulations. Security.
The train, which was carrying empty wagons on the Milan-Turin route, was traveling at a speed of 160 km/h when it hit a team in charge of replacing parts of the railway near Brandizzo, according to reports investigative information. “Five workers were killed by a train and two others were injured,” firefighters said in a brief news release.
The company responsible for managing Italy’s rail network, RFI, has confirmed that five workers from an external subcontractor died when they were hit by an “out of service” train just before midnight. RFI expressed its “deep sadness” and condolences to the families of the deceased employees, according to a press release.
“It’s a huge tragedy”
According to AGI, the bodies of the workers, aged between 22 and 52 or 53, were dragged several hundred meters. According to Italian media, the two survivors, including the team leader, are in a state of shock but are physically uninjured, as is the train driver.
The mayor of Brandizzo, Paolo Bodoni, told the AGI agency that a rescuer had described to him a “horrifying scene with human remains over 300 meters.” “It’s a great tragedy,” he said. “We cannot rule out that there was a communication error,” the elected official said. Several judicial and administrative investigations have been launched.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her “deepest condolences” to the families and relatives of the victims and said she was following the investigation closely “in the hope of shedding light on what happened as quickly as possible.” His deputy prime minister for transport, Matteo Salvini, lamented “a terrible tragedy.” “The rules state that work on the tracks can begin when it is certain that there are no longer any trains running on the route,” he wrote on Facebook. “The public prosecutor’s office and experts are working to find out how such a dramatic accident could have occurred last night.”
call for strike
The head of Italy’s largest union, CGIL, called on RFI maintenance workers to go on a four-hour strike on Friday. “We have long condemned the serious – never remedied – deficiencies in safety procedures during the maintenance of the railway network,” he said in a statement.
His counterpart from the Uiltrasporti transport union, Claudio Tarlazzi, denounced an accident that was “shameful and unworthy of a civilized country”, recalling that his organization had already been alarmed by the safety conditions within the RFI leadership. Democratic Party (Left, Opposition) national secretary Elly Schlein called for an urgent workplace safety plan. “We cannot be a country where people continue to die in the workplace,” she emphasized.
According to the European statistics agency Eurostat, Italy recorded 776 fatal work accidents in 2020, the highest absolute number in the EU, but comparable to the trend in France when adjusting for the number of inhabitants and the type of economic activity predominant in the country, as Italy has more industrial companies than in particular its transalpine neighbor. Train accidents are not common in Italy, but the condition of the tracks is often criticized when they occur.