A fire with a column of smoke visible for kilometers, sirens that pierced the evening between Osimo and Filottrano. The flames devoured approximately one thousand square meters of the Luchetta srl company, specialized in the disposal of ferrous materials. Plastic, machinery, scrap: everything engulfed in a fire that required the intervention of over twenty-five firefighters, who arrived from Osimo, Jesi and Ancona with fourteen vehicles.
No one was injured. But inside that shed, transformed into a fire trap, Franky, the budgie who over the years has become a symbol for those who love cycling, was trapped. Franky was in fact the training partner of Michele Scarponi, the climbing cyclist from the Marche nicknamed the Eagle of Filottrano. It flew alongside him as he pedaled through the streets of his home, resting on the handlebars or on his shoulder, transforming every ride into a powerful and unexpected image.
Franky and Michele, a bond that had made the rounds on the web
Franky did not belong to the champion, but she had entered his history. Those scenes had won over cycling enthusiasts, telling an intimate and smiling side of an athlete capable of winning the 2011 Giro d’Italia. Scenes of an unconditional love, born by chance, and which became even more powerful after the tragic death of Scarponi, hit by a van in April 2017 while he was training.
Even though Michele was no longer there, Franky continued to fly to the same places, as if he was waiting for that fellow traveler to appear sooner or later with his bike as he always had. She too had known pain: hit by a car, she managed to fly again after a broken wing.
Pain on social media
This time, however, there was no escape. The fire caught her inside the owner Giacomo Luchetta’s company. The flames engulfed plastic and iron materials, making the extinguishing operations long and complex. The area has been seized, while Arpam has started environmental monitoring: at the moment there are no critical issues, but investigations are underway.
The causes remain to be clarified. A fault is hypothesized, perhaps the explosion of a forklift battery, but no leads have been ruled out. Meanwhile, on social media, the memory runs fast. Franky wasn’t just an animal: he was a fragment of collective memory, a reminder of a champion who had transformed fatigue into a smile. Another piece of that story goes with her. And in Filottrano, among the streets traveled by bike, the sky seems emptier today. But we are sure that, somewhere, Franky and Michele met again.
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