38 dead as Italy motorway bridge collapses during a sudden and violent storm in Genoa

Update as of 1pm, August 15, 2018: 

ROME: At least 38 people were killed when a motorway bridge collapsed in torrential rains on Tuesday morning over buildings in the northern Italian port city of Genoa, according to the Italian interior minister.

A 50-metre high section of the bridge, including one set of the supports that tower above it, crashed down in the rain onto the roof of a factory and other buildings, crushing vehicles below and plunging huge slabs of reinforced concrete into the nearby riverbed.

"People living in Genoa use this bridge twice a day, we can't live with infrastructures built in the 1950s and 1960s," Deputy Transport Minister Edoardo Rixi said on SkyNews24, speaking from Genoa.

Italian television showed images of the collapsed bridge, which was built on the A10 toll motorway in the 1960s.

Restructuring work on the bridge was carried out in 2016.

Within hours of the disaster, the anti-establishment government which took office in June said it showed Italy needed to spend more to improve its dilapidated infrastructure, ignoring EU budget constraints if necessary.

"We should ask ourselves whether respecting these (budget) limits is more important than the safety of Italian citizens. Obviously for me it is not," said deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who leads the right-wing League which governs with the 5-Star Movement.

Helicopter footage on social media showed trucks and cars stranded on either side of the 80-metre long collapsed section of the Morandi Bridge, built on the A10 toll motorway in the late 1960s. One truck was shown just metres away from the broken end of the bridge.

Motorist Alessandro Megna told RAI state radio he had been in a traffic jam below the bridge and seen the collapse.

"Suddenly the bridge came down with everything it was carrying. It was really an apocalyptic scene, I couldn't believe my eyes," he said.

Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli told Italian state television the disaster pointed to a lack of maintenance, adding that "those responsible will have to pay." But Stefano Marigliani, the motorway operator Autostrade's official responsible for the Genoa area, told Reuters the bridge was "constantly monitored and supervised well beyond what the law required." He said there was "no reason to consider the bridge was dangerous."

Restructuring work was carried out in 2016 on the 1.2km bridge, first completed in 1967. The motorway is a major artery to the Italian Riviera and to France's southern coast.

Autostrade, a unit of Atlantia, said work to shore up its foundation was being carried out at the time of the collapse.

But the head of the civil protection agency, Angelo Borrelli, said he was not aware that any maintenance work was being done on the bridge.

Borrelli said there were 30-35 vehicles on the bridge when the middle section came down, including three lorries. He said 13 people had been hospitalised, including five in a critical condition.

Photos published by the ANSA news agency on its website showed a huge gulf between two sections of the highway.

Video captured the sound of a man screaming: "Oh god, oh, god." Other images showed a green truck that had stopped on the bridge just meters (yards) short of the gaping hole in the bridge.

Italian television showed images of the collapsed bridge, which was built on the A10 toll motorway in the 1960s.

Some 200 firefighters were on the scene, the fire service said, and Sky Italia television said four people had been pulled from the rubble.

Police footage showed firemen working to clear debris around a crushed truck, while other fireman nearby scaled some of the huge broken slabs of reinforced concrete that had supported the bridge.

The government has pledged to increase public investments and lobby the European Commission to have the extra spending excluded from EU deficit calculations.

"The tragic facts in Genoa remind us of the public investments that we so badly need," said Claudio Borghi, the League's economy spokesman.

The office of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said he was heading to Genoa in the evening and would remain there on Wednesday. Defence minister Elisabetta Trenta said the army was ready to offer manpower and vehicles to help with the rescue operations.

Train services around Genoa have been halted.

Shares in Atlantia, the toll road operator which runs the motorway, were suspended after falling 6.3 per cent.

Here's what know about the bridge, the collapse and the response:

The bridge

The collapse 

 
The victims 

There were varying death tolls, with interior minister Salvini saying "around 30 people" had died.
A spokesman for the Civil Protection service meanwhile told reporters that 20 people were confirmed to have died, and 16 others wounded, including 10 seriously. But officials warned the scale of the disaster was such that the toll was likely to rise.

The emergency response   

 The reaction