ITALY: At least four people were killed and more than 30 injured yesterday evening when a small private aircraft crashed into a prominent central Milan skyscraper in an incident that bore an eerie resemblance to the September 11th attacks on the Twin Towers in New York. Paddy Agnew reports from Rome
The obvious similarities with September 11th inevitably prompted fears of a terrorist action but within an hour of the crash, the Italian Interior Minister, Mr Claudio Scajola, dismissed such speculation, saying: "The initial information that has come to the Interior Ministry would lead us to conclude that this was an accident".
The four people killed included the aircraft's pilot, Italo-Swiss citizen Mr Gino Fasulo, two local government officials working in the building and one passer-by who was hit by falling debris.
The crash occurred at about 5.45 p.m. when, for reasons yet to be certified, the Piper Air Commander private aircraft crashed into the 24th and 25th floors of the 30-floor, 400-ft high Pirelli skyscraper, close to Milan's central train station and the seat of Lombardy's Regional Government.
Initial reports suggest that the aircraft left the small airport of Locarno in Switzerland, just across the border from Milan, at 5.15 p.m., bound for Milan's Linate airport. Normally, such a flight would take less than 20 minutes.
Air traffic controllers at Milan reported that the pilot had contacted them, saying that he had a problem with the aircraft's undercarriage but not apparently sounding much panicked by his predicament. Aviation experts, however, expressed bemusement last night that the Piper ended up flying over central Milan since the normal flight plan from Locarno takes planes on a route well clear of the city centre.
The aircraft's impact with the building inevitably prompted a fire but this proved relatively short-lived and by 8 p.m. firefighters had put out all fires and had also evacuated all the people trapped in the floors above the crash.
The fact that the crash did not provoke a more devastating fire led crash analysts to speculate that the Piper's fuel tanks were empty, and pointing to that lack of fuel as the possible cause of the crash. Unconfirmed news agency reports claim that when the Piper left Locarno it was travelling on a near empty tank and that Mr Fasulo had intended to refuel at Linate airport in Milan.
The death and injury toll might have been much higher but for two fortunate circumstances.
First, the crash occurred in the evening when a majority of workers had already left the office. Second, the 28th, 29th and 30th floors above the crash point were not occupied as they were closed for renovation work.
On top of that, the evacuation process for the 20-odd floors below the crash point appears to have passed off without any panic or untoward incident. There again, fortune may have intervened since a trial-run emergency evacuation of the building was carried out just last month as part of a series of controls on public buildings in the wake of the threat of Islamic terrorist actions in Italy.
Furthermore, it would seem that the Pirelli skyscraper seems to have suffered only limited if extensive superficial damage while the basic structure remained sound. Within an hour of the crash, fire rescue workers were reporting that there was no danger of a collapse.
Meanwhile, despite the crash, Milan's underground metro, which passes close by the foundations of the building, continued to operate without interruption throughout the evening.