Two migrants die in fire at abandoned warehouse in Trieste's Porto Vecchio

A fire in a disused warehouse

Two people, a man and a woman, died in a fire that broke out shortly before 22:45 on Sunday, 1 November, in Magazzino 18, a disused three-storey warehouse in Trieste's Porto Vecchio. The building had been closed to access for some time and was being used as makeshift shelter by migrants arriving along the Balkan route. Firefighters found the two charred bodies on the first floor while they were still extinguishing the blaze. Their nationality had not yet been disclosed. Several other people inside the building, who had come in to shelter from the cold, managed to get out in time.

The rescue operation

Two firefighting crews were sent to the scene, together with an aerial ladder, a water tanker and the duty officer, while the 118 medical service, police and carabinieri also attended. Firefighters entered wearing breathing apparatus through the ground floor, where flames had engulfed a wooden mezzanine that collapsed shortly afterwards without harming the crew. While one team fought the flames, another cut openings with shears and tools to search the upper two floors, and that search led them to the bodies on the first floor. Once the fire was out, crews began clearing material from the ground floor, a job that required a tracked mini excavator sent from the provincial command headquarters. The rescue and clearing work started at 22:45 and ended at 7:45 on Monday, 2 November.

Cause under investigation

According to a first reconstruction, the blaze started from a fire that a group of migrants had lit on the ground floor to keep warm. As the flames spread through the building, the other occupants escaped, while the two victims remained trapped. A floor also collapsed during the fire, and the victims are reported to have died from severe burns and fumes. The Greek daily Kathimerini reported that the flame had instead been lit for dinner, a version that differs from the warming account in Italian reports. Police have been sent to establish how the fire developed.

Two deaths in Rome the same night

In a separate incident in Rome, an 80-year-old man and his 74-year-old wife, both Italian, were found dead in their flat on via Spinoza in the Casal de' Pazzi area. Firefighters had responded to a report of smoke in the stairwell of a seven-storey building and found the apartment filled with smoke. They said the fire had already gone out by itself. According to a first reconstruction, the couple died of asphyxia from fumes produced by a votive lamp that had been lit. Carabinieri from the San Basilio station attended, and the Nucleo investigativo di Roma is handling the technical and scientific checks.

Migrants and the old port shelters

The Porto Vecchio warehouses have become a place where people arriving on the Balkan route sleep rough, often without having been placed in the reception system. The Greek daily Kathimerini reported that many migrants there said they had waited months for a police appointment to formalise their asylum requests, and that some had spent nights in abandoned buildings without adequate toilets or with water taken from public fountains. Trieste is still debating limits on the weekend activities of groups that help migrants at Piazza Libertà, in front of the railway station.