The file of the tragedy at “Ferma Dacilor” was sent to the court. The boss Cornel Dinicu will be tried alongside two other people

The prosecutor's office attached to the Prahova Court announced, on Thursday, the completion of the investigations into the “Dacian Farm” file regarding the circumstances in which the fire occurred on December 26, 2023, as a result of which eight people died, informs Agerpres.

The case prosecutor ordered the prosecution, under the preventive measure of judicial control, of three accused natural persons and a commercial company, for committing the crime of culpable destruction which resulted in a disaster. The three defendants are the owner Cornel Dinicu, Adelina Elena Ilie and the administrator of the company that owned “Ferma Dacilor”, Vitomir Adrian Ristin.

What are the charges of the prosecutors

“During the period 2016 – 26.12.2023, the defendants DC and IAE, de facto administrators of the defendant SC FDP SRL, together with the defendant RVA, statutory administrator of the company, have convergently and systematically carried out steps to achieve the object of activity of the legal entity, by repeatedly violating the legal provisions regarding the running of the activity of 'holiday and short-term accommodation' (…), the tourist unit operating in violation of the provisions of Law 307/2006 on fire protection and the construction fire safety regulation P118-99, HGR 571/2016 for the approval of construction categories that are subject to approval and/or authorization regarding fire safety and the applicable regulations in the field, respectively without obtaining the approvals and authorizations that should have been issued by the Inspectorate for Fire Situations Urgency for proper functioning and non-compliance with fire safety rules”, says a press release from the Prosecutor's Office attached to the Prahova Court.

According to the same source, the construction of the main body of the building, including the restaurant, kitchen and accommodation spaces on the ground floor and attic, was carried out in-house, without obtaining building permits and authorization, the steps and measures ordered for “entering into legality” being carried out in violation of the legal provisions.

“This set of facts created the premises for the outbreak and propagation on 26.12.2023, around 05:45, of a fire that led to the complete destruction of the building and the death of 8 natural persons, who were deprived of any real chance to save themselves”, the statement states.

From the research, it emerged that the source of the fire outbreak was an electrical defect, under the conditions of “the construction and operation of an electrical installation, without a project, undersized, without protections that function properly, without correlating the power of electrical consumers with the types and sections of cables required, without correlating the short-circuit protection/grounding systems with the expansion of the boarding house's own electrical network, all of which lead to the susceptibility of excessive heating to the point of igniting the material insulation plastic of the electrical conductors/ the occurrence of an electrical defect such as a short circuit”.

The investigators also determined that the spread of the fire was facilitated by the lack of fireproofing of the wooden material used in the construction of the building and by the non-functioning of the fire detection, signaling and alarm system, and the objective impossibility of saving the victims was generated by the non-functioning of the same system and the lack of optimal escape routes.

The prosecutor's office mentions that the criminal investigation activities were carried out together with judicial police workers from the Criminal Investigation Service – Prahova County Police Inspectorate. During the investigation, other police structures or institutions were also co-opted: IGPR, the National Institute of Criminalistics, the National Institute of Forensic Expertise, the National Institute of Research – Development for Mining Security and Anti-Explosive Protection (INSEMEX Petroşani).

After the completion of the indictment, the file was sent for resolution to the Mizil Court.

The Tragedy of the “Dacian Farm”

A devastating fire resulted in eight deaths, including three children, on the morning of December 26, 2023, at the Dacilor Farm in the village of Tohani in Prahove.

Cornel Dinicu and the deeded administrators of the tourist complex – Cornel Dinicu, Vitomir Adrian Ristin and Adelina Elena Ilie – are accused of negligent destruction which resulted in a disaster.

According to the investigators, the construction of the main body of the building, which includes a restaurant, kitchen and accommodation spaces on the ground floor and attic, was carried out in-house, without obtaining building permits and authorization, and the steps and measures ordered for “entering into legality” were carried out in violation of the legal provisions.

“Also, it must be specified that the tourist unit operated in violation of the provisions of Law No. 307/2006 on fire protection, HGR No. 571/2016 for the approval of construction categories that are subject to fire safety approval and/or authorization and the applicable regulations in the field, respectively without obtaining the approvals and authorizations that should have been issued by the Emergency Situations Inspectorate for the proper operation and without observing fire safety rules. The situation exposed previously created the premises for the outbreak and propagation of a fire on December 26, 2023, at around 05:45 (…), the probable source of the fire being the thermal effect of the electric current”, previously stated the Prosecutor's Office at the Prahova Court.

According to the cited source, the commercial company was connected to the electricity supply network based on a contract concluded in 2014, for a non-domestic consumer type natural person, consumption place with the name “water pump” having a power of 8 Kw, insufficient to support the electricity consumers of a boarding house.