The frantic chirping of the cicadas insinuated an absurd sense of peace. All around, in the open countryside, under a burning sun, bloody sheets of metal stuck right into the branches of the olive trees, wreckage, moans, screams. The effort of the rescuers to open passages, the anxiety of the relatives who arrived one by one, the screams of those who asked us: “I’ve been around the hospitals, where is my son?”. Then, after hours of frantic search, the ghostly silence of the evening with the yellow sheets covering the bodies and the countryside dotted with coffins, quickly taken away to the Bari morgue.
Ten years later, Andria stopped in front of that wound. The July 12, 2016on the railway line between Andria and Coratotwo trains collided head-on on a single track section: 23 people died, another 51 were injured. Today, on the tenth anniversary of the tragedy, the President of the Republic also arrived in Puglia Sergio Mattarella to pay homage to the victims and meet their families. At 11.05, the exact time of the crash, twenty-three bells rang followed by the reading of all the names of the victims.
The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, in Andria for the ten years of the massacre, in front of the sculptural statue entitled ‘The Community’ by the master Cosimo Giuliano which represents the strength that emerges when people hold onto each other in the face of pain
(HANDLE)
That day I was in Andria to follow what in the space of a few hours would prove to be one of the most serious railway tragedies in recent history, not only in Italy but in Europe. I remember the journey to Puglia, the heat, the first, still fragmentary, information that came from agencies and television: two convoys had collided in the countryside between Andria and Corato, a route traveled every day by students, workers, commuters and, in the summer, also by many tourists. Some went to work, some to their grandmother, some to visit their boyfriend, some to the seaside.
I remember the queues of family members in front of the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Bari where the victims had been taken. I still remember the eyes of the people called to recognize their loved ones as they prepared to enter the morgue. I remember the angry voices of those demanding answers to a question that crossed everyone’s mind: how could such a disaster happen in 2016?
The pain of families, the anger of a community
I remember a very blond girl who only repeated in front of us reporters: “Congratulations, Popes.” His father, Enrico Castellanohad arrived from Turin to celebrate her name day with her. He had boarded that train to reach her. It never arrived. I remember the composed and at the same time irrepressible anger of those who asked for a simple thing: justice. Not revenge.
“We don’t deserve to die like this” Enrico’s daughter then said. It was a phrase that summed up the feeling of many. Because behind that tragedy there were not only 23 people dead and 51 injured. There was the most painful question: could it have been avoided?
The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, greeted with handshakes the families of the victims and the survivors of the train massacre of 12 July 2016 on the Andria-Corato route in which 23 people died and 51 others were injured. The relative of a victim bid farewell to the Head of State in tears. The ceremony took place in the square in front of the Andria railway station
(HANDLE)
The pain of families, the silence of waiting
In the following days I met survivors and family members. Everyone carried their own fragment of that morning. There were people who were saved by chance, by a coincidence of a few minutes, by a place changed at the last moment. Like Arcangela, who should have gotten on the first carriage and instead found herself on the third. “It’s as if I were born a second time,” she said from her hospital bed. There was Josephine who had seen her husband Matteo trapped between the sheets of metal and had started to get him out by reciting the Our Father and theHail Mary. A scene that still remains imprinted today: faith that becomes a concrete force within the horror. There was Samueljust seven years old, survived because his grandmother Donata had shielded him with her body. The child did not yet know that the person who had protected him would never return home. And there were the boys. Those of the torchlight processions in Andria, those who in front of the coffins said they didn’t want to transform pain into hatred.
Rescuers at work after the train collision on 12 July 2016
(HANDLE)
Ten years later: the judicial truth
Today, ten years later, the final level of judgment is missing – next October 7th in the Supreme Court – for the judicial epilogue of the matter. Last autumn, the Bari Court of Appeal confirmed, on appeal, two convictions and fourteen acquittals. Six years and three months of imprisonment for the station master of Andria Vito Piccarreta and six years and nine months for the train conductor Nicola Lorizzo. The acquittal of the Ferrotramviaria company and the managers involved in the proceedings was also confirmed. The sentence followed the approach already emerged in the first instance: the tragedy was mainly traced back to a human error in the management of railway traffic, while no criminal liability was recognized for the failure to invest in security contested by the Prosecutor’s Office.
The process had at its center that railway traffic management system based on the so-called telephone blockin which the station masters communicated with each other the authorization for the departure of the convoys. A system considered by the Trani Prosecutor’s Office not to be adequate for modern safety standards. That day, at 10.45am, the authorization for the departure of the train coming from Corato arrived. At 11am the convoy headed in the opposite direction left Andria. The two trains found themselves on the same track. The impact was inevitable. After the tragedy the line was completely transformed: rail traffic only resumed in 2023 with the doubling of the tracks and new automated safety systems.
The wound, however, is still open for those who have lost a family member. “We’ve been through more than the little trials,” he said Giuseppe Bianchinofather of Alessandra, one of the victims, on the sidelines of the Andria ceremony, «we constantly changed classrooms, we constantly changed judges, we were thrown from one side to the other, we even held the hearings in a theater: shameful. We expect nothing more at the hearing on 7 October in the Supreme Court, a trial like this was horrifying, so heavy, so onerous with 23 victims and 51 injured and us treated like this.”
A wound that affects everyone
Going back in memory to those days I think above all of the faces. Because tragedies are often told through numbers: 23 dead, 51 injured, two trains, a years-long trial. But behind those numbers there were, and are, people, families, lives. The question that remains, ten years later, is not just who was criminally responsible. It’s also what lesson we learned. Every infrastructure is not just made of tracks, concrete and technology. It is made up of people entrusted to the responsibility of other people.
«Squares, plaques, statues, signs dedicated to the victims do not make up for 10 years of absence. They don’t return faces and hugs. Because 23 people don’t die due to fatality, they die due to responsibility. Precise”, said the mayor of Andria, Giovanna Brunoduring the ceremony in the presence of Mattarella.
And the memory, once again, goes back to those days, to the endless queues in the hospitals of Andria and Trani, Terlizzi and Bisceglie, where the wounded had been taken to donate blood. Many were boys. “They’re our relatives,” they told us reporters. I’ll never forget it.
