The wooden tablet, the parallel tunnel and the porter: all the (bankrupt) attempts to save Alfino Rmpi, who died in a well in Vermicino 43 years ago

We republish Angela Geraci’s article on the Vermicino accident, in which little Alfredino Rmpi ​​lost his life on June 13, 1981. On Friday 13 June, in the early evening on Rai 2, the documentary TV in the well reconstructs the tragedy and the role of the media.

Alfino Rmpi ​​was six years old when On the evening of 10 June 1981 He fell into an artesian well a Vermicinonear Rome. The child, born on 11 April 1975, was on vacation with the family: his father Fernando, his mother Francesca, the little brother Riccardo who was then 2 years old and his grandmother Veja.

Alfredino – who had to be operated for one in September congenital heart disease – That Wednesday afternoon had taken a walk in Father’s Campagnia and around 19 he asked to be able to Return home alone crossing the fields: nobody would have seen him alive.

The first rescue attempt: the tablet

At 8 pm the family starts looking for the child and one hour later he gives the police alarm. The firefighters also arrive. Soon it turns out that in the area there is an artesian well 80 meters deep. The mouth is about 30 centimeters wide but, when the well is discovered, it is covered by a sheet metal. A policeman decides to move it anyway and manages to hear, distant and weak, Alfredino’s voice.

The owner of the well, it will be known later, just that evening around 9 pm he had covered the hole without knowing who had fallen into the baby shortly before.

It is estimated that the child has stopped about 36 meters deep and the rescue operations begin. The first attempt consists in falling into the well irregular and twisted well, one wooden tablet to which the child can cling to. Bad idea: the tablet stands at 24 meters. Meanwhile, it’s night. At one, some Rai technicians fall with a microphone probe To allow communication with Alfredino.

Second attempt: the parallel tunnel

Alfino Rmpi ​​seems lucid and responds to rescuers. Meanwhile, the attempts of the Alpine Rescue Speleologists to reach the child but the situation is complex. The thinner falls upside down but they can’t even reach the tablet that obstructs the well.

You decide to dig a parallel tunnel To be joined with a horizontal passage to the well in which the child is blocked. The works begin on June 11th but The ground is hard And the excavation proceeds slowly.

In the meantime, the hours spend and on the spot, not cordoned, one is collected crowd of curious and volunteers. In the end it is estimated that in Vermicino there are about 10 thousand people. At the place where Alfredino is struggling not to die, they will also arrive street vendors.

A Flebo is dropped with water and sugar

The attempts of the smaller build volunteers who try to reach Alfredino but there is nothing to do. Thus passes this whole on June 11: The baby has been blocked in the bowels of the earth for over 24 hours.

The next day, on June 12, the parallel well finally arrives about thirty meters deep and new calculations also establish that Alfredino is not 36 meters but 32 from the surface. The child, with a weaker voice, begins to say he was thirsty. A Flebo with water and sugar will be dropped to try to give it relief.

Alfredino though speaks more and more rarely and also starts to breathe less and less frequency. The Rai cameras arrive on the spot: it seems that the child can be brought to safety within a few hours and the television wants to follow the rescue live. The first direct monstrum in the history of TV will last 18 hours And it will mark the memory of many Italians anxious for Alfredino’s fate.

Alfredino slips lower down

The President of the Republic also arrives on the afternoon of 12 June in Vermicino Sandro Pertini.

Around 7pm, 48 hours after falling into the well, the horizontal tunnel is completed that connects the two wells. And the terrible discovery is made: Alfredino is not where he expected. In fact, it slipped even further down in the dark and mud, perhaps precisely because of the vibrations of the excavation of the second well.

The speleologist and the porter fall into the hole

It remains a single possibility: try again to fall into the well someone who takes the child. The first to try is Claudio Aprile, speleologist: Try to enter the well where Alfredino is coming from the tunnel, but he can’t.

In the night between 12 and 13 June 1981 the Sardinian volunteer descended to the well Angelo Licheri, porter in a typography. He is 37 years old. It is dropped to the head down to 60 meters deep. Try to take up Alfredino three times, but The laces melt at every attempt. He manages to touch him and in an attempt to bring him to the surface with him breaks him, without doing it on purpose, his left wrist.

But the child slips from his fingers and ends up even further down. After 45 minutes upside down (When the permanence time in this position is considered to be a maximum of 25 minutes), Licheri leaves the hole. Without Alfredino.

The body recovered 28 days later

At 5 in the morning try to save Alfredino Another speleologist: Donato Caruso. The man brings the handcuffs underground to tie the small one but also this last attempt is not successful. Alfino Rampi is declared dead at 7.20 on Saturday 13 June. His body will be recovered 28 days later.

Below the screen of the website of the « Center Alfredo Rmpi »non -profit organization created by the child’s mother and who deals with civil protection and minors. On May 20, 2015, the message of condolences to the family was published for the disappearance of Alfredino’s brother, Riccardo, who died at 36 years of heart attack during a bachelor party.