Italy’s bridge collapse recalls mafia dangers
It has been the stuff of macabre legend for years — that those who cross the Sicilian mafia end up encased in the concrete pylons of viaducts and bridges.
The truth about the mafia and construction, however, is far more lethal. Rather than dumping rival gangsters into wet cement, organised crime groups imperil people’s lives by building bridges, tunnels, roads and apartment blocks with low quality materials and slapdash techniques.
Using cement containing too much sand, for instance, produces bridges and viaducts liable to crumble.
Italian prosecutors have launched an investigation into Tuesday’s collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa, which has so far claimed the lives of 38 people and 10 to 20 still missing.
There is no suggestion, at this point, that organised crime had any role in the construction of the bridge. It was completed in 1967, before the mafia organisations of the south had infiltrated northern Italy.
But the bridge collapse is the latest symptom of Italy’s woeful infrastructure, a sector where big projects have provided rich pickings for the Camorra of Naples, the ’Ndrangheta of Calabria and Cosa Nostra in Sicily.
“There are severe problems with subcontracting. They are fly-by-night operations and they cut corners,” said John Dickie, an expert on organised crime and professor of Italian studies at University College London.
“They use improper concrete to make a profit and that obviously can be very dangerous.”
Natural disasters have also provided rich pickings for the corrupt in Italy. Organised crime syndicates moved into central Italy after an earthquake hit the mountain city of L’Aquila in 2009 and in the aftermath of the country’s next big earthquake, in the town of Amatrice in 2016.
Decades of under-investment, political paralysis and dysfunction have taken as heavy a toll on Italy’s infrastructure as the depredations of the mafia and corrupt businessmen.
Work has only just finished on a major highway linking Salerno, south of Naples, with Reggio Calabria in the toe of the Italian boot — despite it being started in 1966.
Concrete bridges and flyovers built during the 50s and 60s are coming to the end of their natural lives — but the political will to replace them is lacking.
Italy’s populist government has accused Autostrade per l’Italia, the firm that managed the Genoa bridge, of putting profits before safety and failing to spend enough on maintenance — a charge the company vociferously denies. — Daily Telegraph