34 years ago, a fighter jet crashed into a school. The story in a podcast

They were having German lessons when a plane crashed into them. On 6 December 34 years ago twelve 15-year-old boys lost their lives between the desks of the Gaetano Salvemini Technical Institute in Casalecchio di Reno, the most populous municipality on the outskirts of Bologna. At 10.33 a.m. that morning, an Aermacchi 326 military aircraft crashed out of control, during a training exercise, into the school branch in Via del Fanciullo, a few metres from the Autostrada A1 crossing, smashing through a wall and entering with its entire nacelle inside the classroom housing the IIA section. Only four students of the 16 present, and the teacher, managed to save themselves. In a few moments, the building filled with toxic and incandescent fumes and 88 people, including teachers and students, suffered injuries from deep burns or serious fractures from jumping out of the windows on the upper floors. The balance could have been much more serious if help had not arrived almost immediately, just after the stricken aircraft passed over the Casalecchio di Reno fire brigade headquarters, hinting at the imminent possible tragedy. The pilot at the controls of the aircraft saved himself by ejecting from the cockpit and landing with his parachute a few hundred metres from the Casteldebole field where, at that moment, the Bologna calcio team was training.

Anita Panizza ed Elisabetta Fusconi, le autrici del podcast Cherosene

"I remember perfectly the noise of the impact and I have the image, the frame of the plane coming at us," reports Alessandra Venturi, one of the Salvemini students who saved herself by clinging to the edge of a window with broken glass while waiting for help to arrive. Hers is one of the many testimonies collected by Anita Panizza and Elisabetta Fusconi within the podcast "Cherosene. Storia di un aereo contro una scuola," produced by Radio24 with Audio Tales. Thirty-four years later, it reconstructs in detail what happened on 6 December 1990 through the testimonies of those who were there, those who lost a child that day, those who survived and those who, finally, found themselves having to rescue the injured and accompany the families called to identify the bodies at the Forensic Medicine. Intimate memories, emotions that resurfaced, lives that went on despite mourning, as well as unheard voices that for almost 30 years remained locked in silence like that of Milena Gabusi, one of the four survivors from class II°A: 'There was fire everywhere and in front of me I had the hole made by the plane. I said: that is my salvation'.

Cherosene also traces the court case that, among other things, also leads to questions about the appropriateness of military exercises in peacetime over population centres. Not only that, but there is also the wound that has never healed, of a State that decides to defend the Air Force in court, through the State Attorney's Office, instead of defending the Ministry of Education to which the Salvemini Institute belongs.

Today, as every year, in the building hit by the plane, where the chasm in the wall is still present and clearly visible, a commemoration is being held in memory of the 12 victims of the 1990 C Salvemini Institute.