Bridge collapse kills 26 in Italy
A bridge in the heart of Genoa collapses, killing 26 people as dozens of vehicles and tons of concrete and steel plunged onto city streets below.
GENOA, Italy — A bridge in the heart of Genoa collapsed on Tuesday, killing 26 people as dozens of vehicles and tons of concrete and steel plunged onto city streets below in a disaster that triggered an emergency review of Italy’s aging infrastructure.
Adriano Scimpioni said he had just finished his shift at the city’s garbage collection company when “I heard something like an explosion and a screech of iron, and in a second we were all covered by a cloud of dust.”
Scimpioni went outside, and with his smartphone he started broadcasting the scene on Facebook.
“I immediately thought of the victims; I held my tears, with difficulty,” he said. “We were impotent, we didn’t have the means to help those who remained underneath.” He said two of his colleagues had been killed.
The highway bridge fell by as much as 148 feet just before noon, taking about three dozen cars and three trucks with it, according to Angelo Borrelli, chief of the Civil Protection Department. At least 15 people were injured, nine of them seriously.
Giuseppe Conte, who took over as prime minister in June, traveled to the scene of the disaster. The office of the city’s public prosecutor said it would open a criminal inquiry, examining whether the collapse was because of negligence, and federal authorities indicated that they too would investigate.
In a phone interview, Antonio Occhiuzzi, director of the Institute for Construction Technology for Italy’s National Research Council, said that most of the nation’s infrastructure “needs to be carefully reexamined” because much “was at the end” of its useful life span.”
The collapse of the Genovese bridge was a serious alarm, he said, “because it is not an isolated case — in the last three years, a number of bridges have collapsed in Italy, and they are all around 50 years old.”
The national police noted that there was a “violent cloudburst” about the time the section fell, and some witnesses said the bridge was struck by lightning just before it collapsed, though it was not clear whether the storm contributed to the failure.
Edoardo Rixi, the deputy transportation minister, said that the bridge had shown some “signs of problems” in the past. “A bridge like that doesn’t collapse because of a lightning bolt, or a storm,” he said. “Those who are responsible must be found.”