and I thought it was the end…, Viareggio, june 2009

Viareggio, Italy.

…”I thought it was the end” is an opportunity to glance at the lives of some people that otherwise would have remained unknown. Their houses, their belongings, their broken lives are now fixed in local people’s minds. This series of pictures is meant to be a tribute to their existence.

30^th June 2009

It was shortly before midnight when a train carrying liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) derailed in the Italian seaside resort of Viareggio. The two train conductors promptly ran away and jumped over the railway boundary wall, shouting: ‘cheese it! it’s going to explode, it’s going to explode!’

A few seconds later, the whole town was suddenly awakened by a big explosion. All that happened a couple of hundred meters from the central station, in front of a little street named Via Ponchielli that was not protected by any retaining wall or barrier. So, when the first carriage derailed and crashed, the liquefied fuel in contact with air became white, frozen gas that, heavier than air, in a few minutes had silently penetrated like a snake through the little concrete fence which separated Via Ponchielli from the rail tracks. There, after having reached any open door or window, filled up the buildings until it found a spark. Everything happened straight away, no time to think, no time to understand, no escape route.

Today, three months later, the toll is 31 dead, 10 serious injured, 80 homeless, a 32 million-euro damage, and nobody is under investigation yet, for a disaster which could have certainly been avoided.

Wim Wender’s film about Riace and beyond