“Absurd noise, everything exploded” –

At the Bargi power station, on Lake Suviana, in the Bologna area, yesterday was the day of pain: in the morning the body of the latest victim, Vincenzo Garzillo, 68 years old, from Naples, was found by divers: following three days of feverish searches in the murky water, between floors -8 and -9 flooded following the explosion, collapse and fire, the tragic death toll in the hydroelectric power plant, which has always been the pride of the municipality of Camugnano and a resource of the territory, has risen to 7, and now transformed into a place of death: a team of psychologists assisting the relatives. “When I arrived they were already working. I have the habit of going down and saying hello to them all, I always do. Sometimes I even bring a coffee down. So I came down while they were doing the testing. I heard the alternator doing this a bit of an anomalous noise and at first I didn’t give it too much thought. Then it went off the rails…”, Emanuele Santi, an employee of Enel Green Power, told Corriere della Sera today.

A noise that, step by step, became “absurd”. The overrevving “became louder and louder, it never stopped,” she said. Then the awareness and the attempt to save what might be saved. “When I realized that he wasn’t going to stop I started shouting: away, everyone away, out! And I ran up”, admitted Santi, who then recalled that on floor -8 “everything exploded” and that on -9 the water has arrived. The version of the Enel Green Power employee was confirmed in the words of Calogero Turturici, commander of the Bologna fire brigade: “There was no sudden explosion of the alternator but it was preceded by anomalous signals that convinced the operators to find themselves in a dangerous situation and to escape,” he said.