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Death toll at Florence building site rises to five

Rescue teams Saturday worked to recover the body of a fifth person killed by the collapse of a supermarket under construction in Florence, as the Tuscan city held a day of mourning.

Published: 18 February 2024 09:14 CET

Photo and handout from February 16, 2024 by the Vigili del Fuoco, the Italian Corps. of Firefighters, shows the construction site where five workers were killed after a part of the structure collapsed in Florence.

Photo and handout from February 16, 2024 by the Vigili del Fuoco, the Italian Corps. of Firefighters, shows the construction site where five workers were killed after a part of the structure collapsed in Florence. (Photo by Handout / Vigili del Fuoco / AFP)

The region’s president Eugenio Giani said that the final death toll stood at five after Friday’s accident, which happened as workers were putting together prefabricated concrete structures.

“We can now say there are five dead, it’s a dramatic toll,” he told Italian media.

The bodies of three construction workers were found soon after the collapse, and the body of a fourth was recovered by firefighters working through the night.

Three workers were hospitalised, two of them in a serious but not life-threatening condition.

The accident took place at the site of a new Esselunga supermarket northwest of Florence’s main train station.

Photographs released by the firefighter service showed a beam which appeared to have snapped, bringing down other concrete slabs.

Pope Francis sent his condolences Saturday and called for “greater diligence from those responsible for protecting workers”.

Italy’s newspapers regularly carry stories of workers killed on the job.

Almost 800 deaths at work were recorded in Italy last year, according to official statistics — almost 90 percent of them men, and half aged over 50.

According to European Union statistics, Italy recorded 3.17 workplace deaths per 100,000 employed people, above the bloc-wide average of 2.23 but behind France (4.47) and Austria (3.44).

Across the EU, 22.5 percent of all fatal workplace accidents took place within the construction sector.

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Rescuers seek four missing after deadly Italy power plant blast

Rescuers on Wednesday continued to search for four workers still missing after an explosion at a hydroelectric plant in Italy, which has already left three confirmed dead.

“The toll is four missing and three dead,” a fire service spokesman told AFP, revising downwards a toll of four deaths given by local authorities on Tuesday evening.

But there are fears the death toll will rise, amid difficult searches at the Bargi hydroelectric plant run by Enel Green Power on Lake Suviana, near Bologna.

Searches are ongoing, with authorities calling the rescue operation complex as water continues to enter the plant.

The explosion of a turbine, whose cause has not yet been determined, occurred on the eighth floor below the water level, said Bologna’s prefect Attilio Visconti.

“On the ninth floor there was flooding due to a turbine cooling pipe” that brought in several metres of water, Visconti told reporters outside the plant.

A fire service spokesman, Luca Cari, told the ANSA news agency that rescuers “are not working with much hope of finding the missing (people) alive”.

Still, the department’s regional director Francesco Notaro told reporters that workers “maybe found shelter somewhere else” within the large space following the blast.

Firefighters working at the site of an explosion at a hydroelectric power plant on Lake Suviana in central Italy, near Bologna. (Photo by Vigili del Fuoco / AFP)

Five people were injured, according to the AGI news agency, which named the dead as three men aged 73, 45 and 35.

Enel Green Power, the renewables unit of energy giant Enel that operates the plant, offered its “deepest condolences” to the victims and their families following what it called a “serious accident”.

On Wednesday, it said that “efficiency works” had been underway at the time, the contracts for which had been awarded in 2022 to three main companies, Siemens, ABB and Voith.

“From what has been reconstructed, the testing of the first-generation group had already been completed in the past days and, at the time the accident occurred, the testing of the second group was underway,” the statement said.

“The company expresses its gratitude to the relevant authorities that are working tirelessly on rescue operations, to whom it is providing maximum support.”

It previously said the dam basin of the plant had not been damaged in the accident and that there had been no impact on local or national energy supplies.

The mayor of the nearby town of Camugnano, Marco Masinara, called the explosion a “terrible workplace accident” that affected the “entire community”.

“It seems there was a floor slab collapse and rescue is difficult as a lot of water entered inside the eighth basement floor,” he said late on Tuesday.

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