Italian mayor shuts down bridge as a precaution

GENOA, ITALY — A mayor in southern Italy has ordered the closure of a bridge designed by the same architect who created the collapsed Genoa bridge.

The Italian news agency ANSA quoted Benevento Mayor Clemente Mastella as saying Friday about his precautionary measure that it is “better to have inconveniences than trouble” for bridge users.

On Wednesday, the day after Genoa’s Morandi Bridge collapsed, killing at least 38 people, Mastella asked experts to check his city’s San Nicola bridge, which was also designed by architect Riccardo Morandi. That bridge was built in 1955 and had been reinforced in 2016.

Genoa prosecutors are focusing their probe into the cause of the collapse on a possible design flaw or inadequate maintenance.

Excavators began clearing large sections of the collapsed bridge in Genoa on Friday, searching for people still missing three days after the deadly accident that one survivor said ended with an “unreal silence.”

Officials say 38 people are confirmed killed and 15 injured. Prosecutors say 10 to 20 people might be unaccounted for and the death toll is expected to rise.

One survivor, whose car plunged from the bridge to the bottom along with falling sections of highway, told the Associated Press how as a trained firefighter he immediately understood that the structure had collapsed when the road dropped out from under him.

“It came down. everything, the world, came down,” said Davide Capello, 33, who may be the only person to have fallen from the bridge and walk away unharmed.

Capello was released from the hospital Thursday.