Fatal fall from Passo del Bacio in Portofino, the prosecutor: “The positions of the mayor and the park director must be archived. But the signs on the paths need to be updated”

Portofino – No responsibility on the part of the Portofino Park Authority for the death of Eros Coppolathe 31-year-old electrician who crashed on March 12, 2023 from Pass of the Kiss, on the southern side of the Portofino promontory. This is why the public prosecutor Elena Schiavetta asked archiving for the mayor and then president of the Park Authority and for Federico Marenco, the director of the Park.

“The responsibility of the Park Authority – we read in the request – is to be considered non-existent since the information provided on the degree of difficulty of the route is as a whole, exhaustive, and nevertheless that the acronym EE is not shown on the signs“. But the prosecutor also underlines how the indication of the acronym “would still be desirable with a view to preventing other accidents and injuries, as well as the revision/integration of the warnings reported therein so as to make them stand out even to the inexperienced eye who it is an impervious path with exposed sections, not recommended for those who do not have excellent experience, a steady step and no fear of heights”.

From the investigations carried out by the Carabinieri it emerged that the Authority addressed the issue of trail safety in several sessions without, however, ever “adopting “organic” decisions as a result, for example, of a design study by technically suitable experts, such as mountain guides first and foremost, limiting ourselves to adopting partial and contingent solutions”.

The prosecutor criticizes the type of signage that was there because “the aforementioned path – the one marked with two red dots – is indicated as “very demanding” but there is no technical indication of “EE” and “indicates precautions that would seem not completely exhaustive, suggesting that the danger of the path is linked to the difficulty of water supply, heat stroke and the risk of falling due to unsuitable footwear and not to the strictly technical difficulty of the same”.