Six people were killed in the explosion on Tuesday at a hydroelectric power station in northern Italy and another person remains missing, according to a new report released Thursday evening, April 11. Firefighters said they had found two new bodies in the underground levels of the Bargi power plant located on the banks of the Suviana artificial water reservoir in the small town of Camugnano, about fifty kilometers south of Bologna. A third body was found later Thursday, the Ansa agency reported in the evening. A previous count published Thursday reported 5 dead and 2 missing.
Around a hundred firefighters, including 12 divers, are still present on site to continue the search, firefighters told AFP.
The plant is managed by Enel Green Power, the renewable energy production unit of the Italian giant Enel, which has set up a fund of two million euros for the victims and their relatives. In a statement to AFP, the company explained that a fire had affected one of the two groups at the power plant in a place called Bargi.
“After investigation, the Bargi plant dam basin was not damaged and is safe
,” the group said. Production has been interrupted, but there has been no impact on local or national supply.
An investigation is underway
“Efficiency improvement works”
were
underway at the plant when the explosion occurred, according to Enel Green Power.
“There was no security problem, it was an intervention planned since September 2022 (...) for a technical update
,” explained Enel Green Power CEO Salvatore Bernabei on Thursday, quoted by the newspaper
Il Corriere della Sera
. This work was entrusted to three major specialist companies: Siemens, ABB and Voith.
An investigation by the Bologna public prosecutor's office is underway and it will examine, among other things, the chain of subcontractors, Bologna prosecutor Giuseppe Amato told the local press.