Accident during a school trip, the balcony of a historic house collapses: teacher and tour guide injured

Abrupt epilogue for a school trip in the province of Ferrara: a teacher and a tour guide were injured in the collapse of a balcony of a historic house. The episode happened this morning in Ro, a hamlet of the municipality of Riva del Po in the province of Ferrara. A group of primary and secondary school students had been taken on a tour of Villa Rivani Farolfi, a historical residence located in the Ferrarese region. This was a special project for the young pupils from Ro, linked to the area and especially to the Mill and the places narrated by Riccardo Bacchelli. The eighteenth-century villa is privately owned and the owners live elsewhere, but they leave the keys available precisely for guided tours.

After the tour to discover the rooms of the villa, the students would look out onto the balcony overlooking the park outside. Behind them a teacher and a guide. A few moments later the balcony collapsed. At the time of the collapse only the adults were left on the balcony. The teacher and the guide plummeted to the ground, a flight of five metres, along with the rubble. The call for help was immediate. In a few minutes, the Rovigo and Ferrara fire brigade, 118 health workers with two ambulances and an ambulance, and the Carabinieri arrived on the scene. The injured, after initial dressing on the spot, were transported to the Sant'Anna hospital in Cona for further checks and treatment. Their lives would not be in danger.

All the students, who were promptly escorted back to school, were unharmed. For them, however, it was a great shock and school operators and teachers from the nearby school rushed to manage the situation as best they could. Also on the scene were headmaster Domenico Marcello Urbinati and Daniela Simoni, mayor of Riva del Po. Investigators will now have to clarify the causes and dynamics of the incident. The state of preservation of the building will have to be ascertained before the visit and it will be necessary to establish whether and how many children climbed onto the balcony and whether or not their weight was a determining factor in the collapse. Shortly after the incident, the pupils' families were informed of the incident and reassured about their children's condition. The school headmaster also wants to know what direction to take. The villa could be put under sequestration.