Bridge collapse
Was architect to blame?
Another three metres and he would have been dead.
Antonio Rubino slammed on the brakes of his car just short of the point at which the bridge in Genoa collapsed.
A few seconds later and he would have plunged into the void – as did all the cars and trucks in front of him.
He was one of several drivers to cheat death yesterday when the Morandi bridge collapsed during a heavy thunderstorm and torrential rain.
‘‘I was the last car behind those who died,’’ said Rubino. ‘‘In front of me the asphalt just completely collapsed. I’m alive by a miracle. Luckily I was not shunted from behind otherwise I would have gone down with the others. I was three, maybe four metres from the abyss. There was total panic. People got out of the cars and ran.’’
At least 30 people, including a child, died in the collapse of the motorway bridge, with up to 35 cars and five to 10 trucks plummeting to the ground.
‘‘Around 30 people are dead and many others are seriously injured,’’ Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister, said.
Nearly 300 firefighters and rescue workers battled into the night to find survivors beneath giant mounds of concrete debris and twisted steel girders.
The 198 metre-long section of the Morandi bridge collapsed during an intense thunderstorm which brought torrential rain.
The disaster happened as millions of Italians headed to the coast to celebrate a national holiday on known as Ferragosto, traditionally the height of the summer tourist season.
Salvini said those responsible for the collapse would be held to account. He said he wanted the ‘‘names and surnames of those to blame because a tragedy like this in 2018 is not acceptable’’.
The tragedy is merely the latest in a series of bridge disasters in Italy that have been linked to shoddy construction, corrupt contracting and mafia infiltration of the building trade.
Widespread problems with Sicily’s road network came to a head in 2015 when a viaduct crumbled eight days after it was inaugurated.
Sicily’s local government has a history of ordering viaducts to criss-cross the countryside when a normal road would have been sufficient, prompting suspicions that it was inflating contracts to satisfy mafia-backed builders. The added pylons to hold up the roads are often portrayed as handy places to hide mob murder victims, but the extra profit to be gained for tonnes of unneeded concrete is a more likely motive. – The Times-telegraph Group