Italy leader echoes anger about bridge
As death toll in Genoa hits 42, rage flares over failing infrastructure
GENOA, ITALY— Italy’s president demanded guarantees Saturday that all the nation’s roads are safe following the Genoa highway bridge collapse, after he hugged and comforted mourners at a state funeral for many of the dead in the grieving port city.
Hours earlier, the toll from Tuesday’s bridge collapse rose unofficially to 42 with the discovery of four more bodies.
Firefighter Stefano Zanut told Sky TG24 TV they had extracted the crushed car that an Italian couple on vacation with their 9-year-old daughter had been travelling in. Zanut said the last body pulled out of the wreckage was that of a young Italian man, an employee of Genoa’s trash company, who was working under the bridge when it collapsed.
Before the state funeral ceremony began in a pavilion on Genoa’s fairgrounds, President Sergio Mattarella offered quiet words of comfort for families of the victims. He then took his place with other Italian leaders.
Usually quite reserved in de- meanour, Mattarella was embraced tightly for a long moment by a woman who was among the grieving.
Families of 19 of the dead had their loved ones’ coffins brought to the hall for the funeral Mass led by Genoa’s archbishop, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco.
At other funerals elsewhere in Italy on Friday, angry mourners accused authorities of negligence and incompetence for failing to keep the bridge safe.
During the state funeral, applause rang out and many fought back tears as a prelate read out the first names of some 30 victims who have so far been identified. The mourners also applauded for Italian firefighters, police and volunteers for the civil protection department as they arrived for the funeral.
Mattarella toured what’s left of the Morandi Bridge, which broke apart in a fierce rainstorm, sending a long stretch of roadbed crashing 150 feet into a dry river bed and near several apartment buildings. Those buildings have been evacuated and local authorities have said they will have to be demolished.
Mattarella didn’t speak at the funeral, held on a national day of mourning, but after the ceremony ended, he told reporters the bridge collapse “is an unacceptable tragedy.”
Prosecutors say they are focusing their probe on possible design flaws or inadequate maintenance of the highway bridge, which was completed in 1967.
“I, too, have travelled over this bridge many times, even recently,” said Mattarella, demanding that authorities commit to carrying out their “duty to guarantee the safety of our roads.”
Families voiced frustration and anger that public infrastructure isn’t safe in Italy.
“These are mistakes that keep on repeating. And now, for the umpteenth time, angels have flown into heaven and paid for the mistakes of other human beings, severe mistakes,” said one mourner, a local man who would only give his first name, Alessandro.
He held a placard that read: “In Italy, we prefer ribbon-cuttings to maintenance” — referring to the country’s dilapidated infrastructure.