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Company Maintains That Inspection Was Constant : Justice Pledged in Italian Dam Disaster

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From Times Wire Services

President Francesco Cossiga on Sunday promised survivors and sobbing relatives of the dead that justice will be done if it is negligence that allowed a dam to collapse and send a huge wave of mud through an alpine village, killing about 200 people.

“I ask for justice to be done, not a wild justice, not a vendetta, but an orderly and firm justice,” Cossiga said after leaving a packed Mass at a Roman Catholic church near Stava.

The Chamber of Deputies, Italy’s lower house of Parliament, will discuss the tragedy today. The Senate will debate it Tuesday. Prime Minister Bettino Craxi ordered a special committee to investigate.

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Cossiga arrived by helicopter in Stava, 193 miles northeast of Milan. On Friday, it was transformed in 20 seconds from a scenic tourist resort in the Dolomite Mountains to an expanse of mud, covering three hotels and scores of houses.

Officials said that 195 bodies have been recovered. They said the final toll will pass 200 because many of the 51 people missing are feared dead. It was not expected that any more victims would be found alive. The state prosecutor in Trento, Francesco Simeoni, over the weekend questioned one of the owners of the mining company that used water from two artificial lakes behind the earthen dam to filter industrial wastes.

The owner, Giulio Rota, said there was no way to foresee the tragedy and that the company “constantly inspected the state of maintenance of the dam.”

Simeoni sent out 30 judicial notices to public officials in the area and people connected with the company, telling them they were under investigation. No charges were filed, but he said he would not rule out arrests eventually.

Officials earlier said that water after recent heavy rains apparently seeped into the 20-year-old dam, causing cracks to develop.

Cossiga, meanwhile, visited the Santa Maria in Assunta Church, which is serving as a temporary morgue, in nearby Cavalese. The pews have been removed.

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Cossiga knelt and touched the small white coffin of a child, one of dozens of coffins laid out.

Choking on the odor of formaldehyde, a chemical used to preserve the bodies, he put on a gauze face mask like those worn by relatives who came to identify the remains of their loved ones.

Officials later removed from the church bodies that have not yet been identified.

Cossiga was among hundreds of mourners who packed St. Eliseo Profeta Church in Tesero, two miles from Stava.

Archbishop Alessandro Maria Gottardi of Trento led the hour-long memorial Mass. Looking at Cossiga, Gottardi said, “Never again should men be victims of men.” The archbishop said later that he lost five cousins in the flood tragedy.

Cossiga, accompanied by weeping mourners, visited hospitalized survivors.

Outside the hospital, where empty coffins were stacked one atop the other, Gottardi said it was too early to point fingers, adding: “I am here to try to make sense of what happened. It is certainly bigger than us.”

Rescue workers still searched for bodies, and families and friends of victims arrived from throughout Italy to identify bodies. Much of the search for bodies shifted Sunday from Stava to farther down the valley.

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