It took 67 years, but finally the body of Dante Di Quilio of Abruzzo, one of the victims of the Marcinelle disaster in Belgium, was identified. His remains were buried in a mass grave, along with sixteen other miners who survived the fire that killed 262 people, including 136 Italian immigrants. The family never gave up and eventually, thanks to a DNA test, they managed to find him and put a tombstone in his remains. A news he learned a few days before his wife’s death.
On the morning of August 8, 1956, when a fire, set by a series of electric sparks coming into contact with oil leaking from a pipeline separated by a rising elevator, filled the main gallery of the Bois du Caziere mine with smoke to the surprise of hundreds. The miners continued their operations to rescue the victims in the following weeks. In short, many bodies have been identified and repatriated, but 17 dead are still unknown. Also among them is Di Quilio, who will remain buried for decades in a small Belgian cemetery, among others whose name has not been released. In October 2021, the remains of the Abruzzo man were exhumed, and the much-anticipated decision came in the past weeks, thanks to the positive results of his correspondence with a sample taken from his daughter.
The family, who said they were “very touched”, said that the deceased’s wife learned the news shortly before his death and “knew that he would be reunited with her”. Nino Di Pietrantonio, president of the Bois du Cazier victims’ association, commented on the news, adding details about another possible identity of Eduardo Romasco, also from Abruzzo, who left a small town for Belgium in the 1950s. The village of Manopello. “Years later, there is still great anger against the Belgian authorities, but that anger is still not clarified,” said the president. “I lost my father in an accident, he had gone to the mine as far as young Africans today.” They come to Italy, fleeing their land from hunger and desperation”.
There is no definitive information about Romasco’s body, which Alamo mayor Oscar Pezzi said was ready to hold a ceremony in favor of Dante Di Quilio, whom he described as a “martyr to work and immigration”. There are still a few corpses to be identified, though in fewer numbers than before. If the outcome of the anthropological and dental examination was decisive for the Di Quilio case, the same was not true for the four bodies that were exhumed with the Italian burial. . “The convergences did not bring the desired degree of certainty,” said attorney Jean-Philippe Mayence.
Among the excluded names, Francesco Cicoria’s, whose children did not give up and who said that they would soon want to dig again, stands out. “The circle is not closed yet, but further testing will be able to answer questions we’ve been asking ourselves for decades,” said Michele Cicora, son of the still unknown miner. “I, my brother and sister, will not cease to wonder where our father is, otherwise the wounds will never heal,” concluded Cicora.
Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
