Who are the workers who died from poisoning in Sicily?

Five workers dead, one very seriously injured, one slightly injured. It is yet another accident at work that occurred in Sicily on May 6th. The five workers died while they worked on the Casteldaccia sewerage system for the Quadrifoglio Group, company specialized in waste management but also in the maintenance of aqueducts, gas pipelines and oil pipelines, which operates on behalf of Amap, the Palermo company that manages the water and sewerage pipelines in the city.

It would be a chain accident. Three of them entered the tank of a sewage lifting plant. They felt bad and asked for help. The two colleagues who arrived to help also died. The sixth intoxicated person, who fainted from the fumes, was intubated by the 118 staff, taken to the Palermo Polyclinic and admitted to intensive care. A worker managed to get out of the plant and raise the alarm.

The provincial commander of the Fire Brigade, Girolamo Bentivoglio Fiandra, confirmed, according to the Corriere della Serathat the workers would have been suffocated by “hydrogen sulphide”. They were in the tunnels of the wastewater lifting plant for maintenance activities. And he added: “If all the necessary precautions had been taken, all of this would not have happened.”

According to CGILthe hypothesis is that the attic collapsed: two workers were busy working on the sewer system under the road surface to access the manhole, three others would have been above.

Four of the dead workers were employed by the Quadrifoglio company, a fifth would be a temporary worker directly from Amap, which manages the water and sewerage network for Palermo and 53 other municipalities in the province and which uses external companies and temporary workers. The victims are Epifanio Assazia, 71 years old, who should be the co-owner of the Quadrifoglio company, together with Antonino DI Salvo, and who was from Partinico (Palermo) like Ignazio Giordano, aged 57; Giuseppe Miraglia, 47 years old, was originally from San Cipirello, also in the Palermo area, Roberto Raneri, 51 years old, was from Alcamo. Giuseppe La Barbera was the temporary worker at Amap.

The mayor of Casteldaccia, Giovanni Di Giacinto, said: «It is a huge tragedy. We are shocked. Five workers who died for a piece of bread, inconceivable.”