Workers Return To Pirelli Tower
One worker tells an Italian news agency it's a "strange sensation" going back to work at a Milan skyscraper.
Some 300 government workers returned to their offices on the first eleven floors of the 30-story Pirelli tower -- just four days after a small plane slammed into the building.
Authorities have ruled out a terror attack but still do not know whether Luigi Fasulo committed suicide due to money problems, fell ill at the controls of his Commander 112 aircraft or was the victim of a disastrous technical problem.
"It's sad," office worker Gianfranca said as she entered the building, bathed in spring sunshine. "September 11 has left us scared. Now, whenever we see a plane go by, we shudder."
Employees returning to work today observed a moment of silence. One worker on the eleventh floor says there's "some fear" because he's on "the last safe floor."
The area around the base of the building was still littered with paper, twisted metal and broken glass. One woman collapsed in tears as she stepped inside.
The crash -- which killed two women lawyers working on the 26th floor, injured 29 and ripped a jagged gash in two facades of the skyscraper -- briefly revived fears of a new September 11 terror attack and sent world stock prices lower.
Markets quickly recovered when authorities ruled out a deliberate attack. But the cause of the second air disaster in Milan in six months remains a mystery.
Calls multiplied for tighter rules over small planes. Last October a Scandinavian Airlines System commercial jet hit a private plane on a runway at Milan's Linate airport, killing
118.
The Pirelli Tower, which was largely empty at the time of the late afternoon crash and then evacuated, partially reopened on Monday. A small crowd held back by a police cordon looked on.
Emergency workers continued to clear debris from the 26th and 27th floors, devastated in the crash. Experts said the structure was intact but it was not known when the upper floors, used by the Lombardy regional administration, would be reopened.
An experienced pilot with more than 5,000 hours of flight time, Fasulo took off from nearby Locarno in southern Switzerland. As he approached Linate airport, he told the control tower he had trouble with the plane's landing gear.
The plane then turned towards the heart of the city and flying at low altitude crashed into the tower, named after the Pirelli tyre-to-cable firm.
Authorities said the autopsy on Fasulo's dismembered body -- which along with the plane's engine passed through the skyscraper and landed on one of its terraces -- could indicate whether he had fallen ill at the controls.
Experts were examining the blackened remains of the plane to see whether the landing gear had stuck. The position of the throttle could help establish whether Fasulo had cut speed while trying manually to release the landing gear.
On the morning of the crash, Fasulo went to police in Italy's Como town near Locarno to complain he had been swindled out of $890,000 by an Italian who on Friday was arrested in France.
Fasulo's family confirmed Luigi had had recent financial troubles but scoffed at speculation he had taken his life.
"He was full of life and happy," the family said in a statement released late on Sunday. "The entire Fasulo family rules out the hypothesis that it was suicide."
Interior Minister Claudio Scajola said suicide was not a logical explanation. "Even if the goal was to cash in on a life insurance policy, he would have done that differently," Scajola told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.