Furniture shed destroyed by the stake, mystery of the causes. Piovesana: “There was no electricity there”

GAIARINE. Only a pile of ash remained of the furniture. The shed has resisted, but it is unusable and will need to be demolished. There was considerable damage following the fire that developed just before midnight between Monday and Tuesday in the warehouse of the Aritali and General Moving companies, in via Strada per Sacile 158, a few steps from the A28 motorway junction.

The flames were also visible from the highway, so much so that motorists gave the alarm and alerted the firefighters. The former mayor of Gaiarine, Romeo Antoniolli, was among the first witnesses passing by and alerted both the rescuers and the owners of the companies. Willful misconduct is not excluded, the findings made by the judicial police team of the fire brigade must be the ones to provide certain answers, as well as the investigation launched by the carabinieri.

By the time the firefighters arrived, around midnight, the fire was already well advanced. The wooden furniture components fueled the flames: what triggered it remains a mystery at the moment.

The fire would have started from the central area and developed at the back of the warehouse, where the materials were stored. Aritali and General Moving deal with logistics for furniture companies and rent the warehouse, which is owned by the entrepreneur Fioravante Piovesana, owner of the Camel Group.

In the rear part, the highest temperatures developed, so much so that some panels of the structure bent and even part of the roof collapsed. The firefighters worked the whole night, preventing the flames from spreading to other neighboring establishments: in fact, there are various small industries around. Teams of firefighters from Conegliano, Motta and Pordenone alternated who, even with the use of a ladder truck, got the better of the stake. The property has an area of ​​approximately 4 thousand square meters.

The supporting structure has resisted, the furniture that was inside is burned. Also destroyed the forklifts. Inside, however, there were no machinery, production is not carried out, but logistics. The damages are being quantified by the insurance experts, a few hundred thousand euros in total.

Since 2017, the shed has been rented to two different companies, Aritali and General Moving, which collaborate and deal with international shipping and transport for companies in the furniture district between Veneto and Friuli. A dozen are the employees. “Friday at 6 pm when we closed and everything was fine”, explains one of the owners, Sergio Modolo. “But even up to 10pm last night, a neighbor told us, nothing unusual was noticed.” Next to it is the Mordiero car repair shop, the electrician at that time finished tidying up the workshop and saw neither fire nor smoke nor did he smell the smell of burning. On Friday afternoon the companies had closed the shed as usual. After Easter Monday, they should have started work again yesterday morning. “We still have to do an inventory of the stored material,” he addedge the holder. “We are waiting for the firefighters to tell us something about the causes, but we have no machinery or anything else there. We cannot exclude anything ».

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THE WITNESS

Fioravante Piovesana: “The electrical systems are on the other side of the building”

That warehouse was once the first headquarters of Camelgroup, a leading company in the production of furniture that is now located in Orsago and has become a giant with a turnover of 22 million euros. The property remained the property of Fioravante Piovesana, 82, a well-known entrepreneur in the area. He wanted to realize what happened in person.

“I was asleep last night when my home phone woke me up. The carabinieri told me that the shed was on fire, I was hit, “she says. Then it was explained to him that it was not his Orsago company, but the shed he rented in Francenigo. Which he was fond of anyway, precisely because the Camel was born and raised there. For five years he had been rented to Aritali and General Moving.

“We have always been happy and satisfied with our tenants, they have been here since 2017, punctual people”, says Piovesana, “they kept the shed as if it were their living room”.

The entrepreneur immediately collaborated with the firefighters, to provide information and collect testimonies from those who had seen the flames passing by in the late evening of Monday.

“Now everything is destroyed, nothing is recovered,” he says discouraged seeing piles of ashes. He who from being an English teacher in high school, in the 1980s became an entrepreneur almost by chance, to act as an interpreter for clients of his cousin Oliviero Piovesana, another historical name in Gaiarine’s furniture business.

Piovesana knows that shed: “All the electrical systems are here (he points to the front of the plant), while down there where it is most burnt there were no plants or machinery left on.” The mystery remains as to what triggered the stake. –