Lennon killer tries for parole again
TWO MORE bodies have been pulled out of tonnes of rubble after a bridge collapsed in Genoa, raising the death toll in the disaster to at least 39 people as the Italian Prime Minister declared a state of emergency.
The collapse of the Morandi Bridge sent dozens of cars and three trucks plunging as much as 150ft to the ground.
Many Italian families were on the road ahead of yesterday’s major summer holiday, Ferragosto.
Civil protection authorities confirmed 39 people died and 15 were injured. Interior minister Matteo Salvini said three children were among the dead.
After a cabinet meeting held in Genoa, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte agreed to to declare a state of emergency in Ligura for 12 months and release €5m from the national emergency fund.
He announced a national day of mourning “to coincide with the funerals of the victims”.
He added: “These are unacceptable tragedies that should not happen in a modern society. This government will do everything to prevent such tragedies from happening again.”
Rescuers and sniffer dogs are continuing to search through tonnes of concrete slabs and steel for survivors or bodies.
Two Albanian men were killed in the collapse, named by authorities as Marjus Djerri and Edi Bokrina. Three French nationals were also said to have died, with local media reporting that the two young women and a man from Toulouse had travelled to Italy for a music festival.
Investigators are also working to determine what caused a 260ft long stretch of highway to break off from the 150ft high bridge.
Italian politicians, for their part, are trying to find who to blame for the tragedy.
The 1967 bridge, considered innovative in its time, had long been due for an upgrade, especially since it saw more heavy traffic than its designers had envisaged.
One expert, Antonio Brencich at the University of Genoa, had previously called the bridge “a failure of engineering”.
An unidentified woman who was standing below the bridge said the structure crumbled as if it were a mound of baking flour.
The Italian CNR civil engineering society said structures dating from when the Morandi Bridge was built had surpassed their lifespan. It called for a “Marshall Plan” to repair or replace tens of thousands of bridges and viaducts built in the 1950s and 1960s.
Mehdi Kashani, an associate professor in structural mechanics at the University of Southampton in the UK, said pressure from heavy traffic or wind, could have resulted in “fatigue damage”.
Italy’s minister of transportation and infrastructure, Danilo Toninelli, said there was a plan to spend €20m (£15.7m) on bids for safety work on the bridge and suggested the state should take control of the highways agency.
The man who shot and killed John Lennon in 1980, Mark David Chapman, is scheduled to go before New York’s parole board next week, in what will be his 10th attempt to win release.
A decision is expected within two weeks of the parole hearing.
The now 63-year-old Chapman is serving 20-yearsto-life in the Wende Correctional Facility in western New York.