ROME (AP) – Italian rescue teams confirmed Saturday that a fifth worker has died after a concrete beam and slab layer collapsed at a supermarket construction site in the city of Florence the day before.
“We have just received word that rescue teams are collecting the body of the fifth worker,” Tuscany president Eugenio Gianni said.
Earlier, firefighters’ spokesperson Luca Cali told RaiNews TV channel that they had recovered the body of a fourth employee. “The amount of debris is huge,” he said.
On Friday, as a group of workers were assembling a prefabricated concrete structure for the new Esselunga supermarket northwest of Florence’s main railway line, a reinforced concrete beam collapsed onto a slab layer and then collapsed, according to initial reports. Eight men were reportedly trapped under the rubble. .
Rescue teams were able to save three of the eight people who were taken to local hospitals with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
According to a preliminary assessment, the accident occurred due to a “structural collapse” of a concrete beam, which may have been caused by a misplacement or construction defect, officials said.
Florence prosecutors have ordered an investigation into the collapse, considering charges of negligence and multiple manslaughter, but no suspects have been named at this stage.
Marina Caprotti, president of Esselunga, the supermarket under construction, expressed her condolences on Friday and pledged to cooperate with the investigation. She said construction was contracted out to a third party.
The collapse has shaken a country already reeling from a spate of worker-related deaths amid heated political debate over poor and dangerous working conditions in recent years.
Most recently, five railway workers were killed in August when they were hit by a high-speed train while performing maintenance work on the railway.
In 2021, the last year for which statistics agency Eurostat has official data, 601 workplace deaths were recorded in Italy. In the same year, it was the second highest figure in the European Union (EU) after France. Across the EU, 22.5% of all fatal occupational accidents occurred within the construction sector.
Right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is visiting Calabria, expressed condolences to the families of the victims on Friday. “This is another story of people going out and working and not coming back home,” she says.
In a statement, Italy’s largest trade union harshly criticized the government for failing to address workplace safety issues, particularly subcontracting standards, and announced a nationwide strike in the coming weeks.
“In 2023, 1,000 people died at work, and in many cases these accidents were caused by subcontracting,” said the leader of Italy’s largest trade union CGIL. Maurizio Landini. He criticized the system in which large companies that win large-scale bids subcontract work to small and medium-sized companies at low prices.
Landini added that it was Meloni’s cabinet that “revised the procurement law and reintroduced the subcontracting cascade.”
The ruling Alliance party accused Landini of linking workplace fatalities to the government’s reintroduction of subcontracting, calling it “disgusting”.
“The CGIL chief ignores the fact that the new regulations were so requested by Europe that Italy is at risk of violating them, and have nothing to do with this tragedy,” the party said in a statement. Ta.
Florence Mayor Dario Nardella declared Saturday the city’s day of mourning.