MILAN — A 51-year-old highway bridge in the Italian port city of Genoa collapsed in a driving rain Tuesday, killing at least 26 people and injuring 16 others as it sent dozens of vehicles tumbling into a heap of concrete and twisted steel. Earlier Tuesday, Italian fire service officials told Italy's ANSA news agency that at least 35 people had been killed.
Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte called it "an immense tragedy ... inconceivable in a modern system like ours, a modern country."
The disaster, on a major interchange connecting Genoa and other northern cities with beaches in eastern Liguria into France, focused attention on Italy's aging infrastructure, particularly its concrete bridges and viaducts built in the postwar boom of the 1950s and 1960s.
What caused the Morandi Bridge to fall remained unknown, and prosecutors said they were opening an investigation but had not identified any targets. Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli said the collapse was "unacceptable" and that if negligence played a role "whoever made a mistake must pay."
Early speculation focused on the structural weakness of the span. Witnesses reported hearing a roar as the 45-meter, nearly 150-foot, bridge collapsed in a torrential rain during midday traffic on the eve of a major holiday that sees most Italians abandoning cities for beaches and mountains.
One unidentified woman who was standing below told RAI state TV that it crumbled as if it were a mound of baking flour. Video of the collapse, showing a misty scene of crumbled concrete, captured a man screaming: "Oh, God! Oh, God!"
Civil Protection authorities said at least 30 cars and three heavy vehicles were on the 80-meter, 260-foot. section of the span that collapsed in the industrial area of warehouses.
There was an immense gap where the bridge used to be, and one heart-stopping image showed a green truck halted on the rain-slickened roadway just short of the edge.
A man who was standing under the bridge in front of his truck at the time of the collapse called it "a miracle" that he survived. The middle-aged man, who did not give his name, said the shockwave sent him flying over 10 meters, 33 feet, into a wall, injuring his right shoulder and hip.
"I was in front of the truck and flew away, like everything else. Yes, I think it's a miracle. I don't know what to say. I'm out of words," he said, walking away from the site.
More than 300 rescue workers and canine crews were on the scene. They used heavy equipment and dogs to search for survivors in the rubble. At least four people were pulled alive from vehicles under the bridge, ANSA reported.
"Operations are ongoing to extract people imprisoned below parts of the bridge and twisted metal," said Angelo Borrelli, the head of Italy's civil protection agency.
Police handout
Officials evacuated several hundred people living along the raised highway that traverses the city as a precaution. The effort would continue into the night.
"It is a bit like working on an earthquake," said firefighters spokesman Luca Cari. "The main difficulty is removing the rubble and safeguarding the rescue teams."
There was confusion over the death toll throughout the day, with different officials giving conflicting numbers.
Officials in the Liguria region said Tuesday night that 26 people had died, saying two more bodies had been found and one of the 16 injured had died in surgery. After visiting the scene, Conte told RAI state TV called the tragedy "a serious wound for Genoa, Liguria and Italy."
The Italian CNR civil engineering society said that 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. Updating and reinforcing the bridges would be more expensive than destroying and rebuilding them with technology that could last a century.
They cited previous accidents: a bridge that fell in April 2017 in the northern province of Cuneo, crushing a carabinieri police car after the officers and driver had barely managed to get away in time; and an overpass that in the northern city of Lecco that collapsed under exceptional weight, crushing a car and killing the driver.
The design of the bridge has been criticized in the past. Antonio Brencich, a professor specializing in reinforced concrete construction at the University of Genoa, called the span "a failure of engineering" in an interview in 2016.
"That bridge is wrong. Sooner or later it will have to be replaced. I do not know when. But there will be a time when the cost of maintenance will be higher than a replacement," he told Italian media Primocanale.
Other engineers said corrosion or weather conditions could have contributed.
"As this reinforced and pre-stressed concrete bridge has been there for 50 years, it is possible that corrosion of tendons or reinforcement may be a contributory factor," said Ian Firth, former president of The Institution of Structural Engineers, a London-based international network. He called the bridge "an unusual design."
Massimo Pinca / REUTERS
Mehdi Kashani, an associate professor in structural mechanics at the University of Southampton in the U.K., said maintenance issues and pressure from "dynamic loads," such as traffic and wind, could have resulted in "fatigue damage in bridge components."
Borrelli said highway engineers were checking other parts of the bridge and that some areas were evacuated as a precaution.
"You can see there are very big portions of the bridge (that collapsed). We need to remove all of the rubble to ascertain that all of the people have been reached," he said.
The transport minister, Toninelli, said the company that has the concession to operate that section of highway said its maintenance on the bridge was up to date and no work was being done at the time of the collapse. But he added that they were about to launch a 20 million euro ($22.7 million) bidding process for significant safety work on the bridge.
"There has not been sufficient maintenance and checks, and safety work for many bridges and viaducts and bridges in Italy constructed — almost all — during the 1960s," he said.
It was the second deadly disaster on an Italian highway in as many weeks.
On Aug. 6, a tanker truck carrying a highly flammable gas exploded after rear-ending a stopped truck and getting hit from behind near the northern city of Bologna. The accident killed one person, injured dozens and blew apart a section of a raised eight-lane highway.
Rescuers work through the night with sniffer dogs and heavy lifting equipment in scenes compared to an earthquake
Italian rescuers have searched through the night for any survivors from the motorway bridge collapse in Genoa that has now been confirmed to have killed 26 people.
Genoa bridge collapse – pictures from the scene Read more
Officials from the Liguria region said on Tuesday night two more bodies had been pulled from the rubble and one person had died during surgery, adding to the 23 deaths reported earlier. More than a dozen people have been injured, most of them seriously. Interior minister Matteo Salvini has said “about 30” people have died, and “many injured in a serious condition”.
One fire official, Emanuele Giffi, told AFP: “We’re not giving up hope, we’ve already saved a dozen people from under the rubble.
“We’re going to work round the clock until the last victim is secured.”
In what witnesses described as an “apocalypse”, an 80-metre section of the Morandi bridge on the A10 motorway came down in an industrial area of the port city during a sudden and violent storm at about 11.30am on Tuesday. About 30 vehicles, including cars and trucks, were on the affected section when it fell 100 metres, mostly on to rail tracks, the fire service said.
Investigators are now looking at what could have caused such a catastrophic collapse, creating a scene rescuers compared to the aftermath of an earthquake. Sniffer dogs searched through the rubble, and heavy equipment was moved in to lift pieces of the bridge. Heavy rain also made conditions more challenging.
As cars and trucks tumbled off the bridge, truck driver Afifi Idriss just managed to come to a halt in time. “I saw the green lorry in front of me stop and then reverse so I stopped too, locked the truck and ran,” he told AFP.
The green truck was still on the bridge in the late evening, stopped just short of the now yawning gap.
'Unusual' span of collapsed Genoa bridge had seen frequent repair work Read more
Aerial footage showed that the falling structure narrowly missed houses and other buildings as it collapsed over a river.
The disaster occurred on a major artery to the Italian Riviera and to France’s southern coast. Traffic would have been heavier than usual as many Italians were travelling to beaches or mountains on the eve of a public holiday, Ferragosto.
“The scene is apocalyptic, like a bomb had hit the bridge,” Matteo Pucciarelli, a journalist for La Repubblica who lives in Genoa, told the Guardian. “There are about 200 rescuers working continuously. People are in shock, it’s a very important arterial road that connects Lombardy and Piedmont with Liguria.”
Play Video 0:52 Aerial footage shows scale of destruction after Genoa bridge collapse – video
Alberto Lercari, a bus driver, earlier told Corriere della Sera: “I saw people running towards me, barefoot and terrified. I heard a roar. People ran away coming towards me. It was horrible.”
Davide Ricci, who had been travelling south, told La Stampa: “The debris landed about 20 metres from my car. First the central pillar crumbled and then everything else came down.”
Matteo Pierami drove across the bridge with his wife and child, aged two months, almost an hour before it collapsed. The family had been making their way from Lucca, in Tuscany, to the Ligurian town of Imperia. A couple of friends and their baby had been travelling in another car.
“I’ve had some time to calm down and am now trying to understand what happened, but my wife and our friends are very shocked,” Pierami said.
“We didn’t hear or see anything, but after passing the bridge stopped at an Autogrill [roadside restaurant], and started to receive calls from family.”
Pierami, an engineer, had driven over the bridge many times before. “There was lots of traffic; there is always a lot of traffic there.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest How the bridge appeared before its collapse. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
The Italian transport minister, Danilo Toninelli, immediately blamed the collapse on poor infrastructure maintenance and pledged that those responsible “would pay”. The minister, from the Five Star Movement, was rebuked by the opposition for using “political propaganda” so soon after the tragedy.
Giuseppe Conte, the prime minister, arrived in Genoa on Tuesday night and was expected to be joined later by his deputy, Luigi Di Maio.
Conte said: “It’s too early to talk about the causes and hypothesis, but one thing is certain, a tragedy of this kind cannot be repeated.”
The president, Sergio Mattarella, expressed his condolences in a statement, while stressing that Italians should be guaranteed the right “to modern and efficient infrastructure that accompanies everyday life”.
“Now is the time for a common commitment towards dealing with the emergency, assisting the injured and supporting those hit by the pain,” he added. “Then a serious investigation into the cause of what happened must follow. No authority can evade an exercise of full responsibility.”
The Morandi bridge, which was inaugurated in 1967, is 90-metres high and just over 1km long. Restructuring work on the bridge was carried out in 2016. The highway operator said work to strengthen the road foundations of the bridge was being carried out at the time of the collapse, and the bridge was constantly monitored.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rescuers among the rubble. Photograph: Luca Zennaro/EPA
Andrea Montefusco, an engineering expert at Luiss University in Rome, said: “It’s difficult to make any serious hypothesis right now. Some people are saying maybe lightning could have struck a cable on the bridge, but at this moment it’s too early to say anything about the cause.”
Montefusco, who grew up in Genoa, added: “It [the bridge] was a sort of jewel in Italian engineering, because at that time it was built with new engineering techniques. I used to enjoy passing over the bridge as a child, it was a novelty.”
About 12 bridges and overpasses have collapsed in Italy since 2004, killing seven people between them. In early 2015 a €13m viaduct in Palermo collapsed within days of opening. Poor structural maintenance was identified as the cause in most of the cases.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Parts of the bridge can be seen collapsing
A motorway bridge has collapsed in the northwest Italian city of Genoa, killing 26 people and badly injuring 15, police told the BBC.
Dramatic video footage captured the moment of the disaster when one of the huge supporting towers crashed down during torrential rain.
Cars and trucks plummeted 45m (148ft) on to rail tracks, buildings and a river along with slabs of concrete.
Searches for people trapped in rubble are expected to go into the night.
Fears that other parts of the bridge might fall have prompted the evacuation of buildings in the area, a rescuer told Italy's Ansa news agency.
Image copyright EPA Image caption Injured people were winched to safety
Interior Minister Matteo Salvini promised that anyone found to be responsible for the bridge collapse would be held to account.
"I have crossed that bridge hundreds of times," he said. "Now, as an Italian citizen, I will do everything to get the names and surnames of the managers responsible, past and present, because it is unacceptable to die like that in Italy."
A representative of the motorway's operator, Autostrade, told Reuters news agency there had been "no reason to consider the bridge was dangerous".
Shares in Atlantia, Autostrade's parent company which runs much of the country's motorways, fell 6.3% after news of the collapse.
How did the structure collapse?
It fell around 11:30 local time (09:30 GMT) during heavy rain. Police reported a violent cloudburst.
"We saw lightning strike the bridge," eyewitness Pietro M all'Asa was quoted as saying by Ansa. "And we saw the bridge going down."
Engineers say it is too early to determine the cause of the collapse but that lightning is unlikely to be the reason.
Image copyright AFP
Another witness, unnamed, recalled: "We heard an incredible roar and first we thought it was thunder very close by.
"We live about 5km [three miles] from the bridge but we heard a crazy bang... We were very scared... Traffic went completely haywire and the city was paralysed."
One image posted by the regional emergency services shows a truck perched at the end of the surviving bridge section immediately before the drop.
What do we know of the victims?
Earlier, fire brigade sources told Ansa unofficially that 35 people were dead and 12 missing.
A child is among the dead, said the head of the civil defence agency, Angelo Borrelli.
Between 30 and 35 cars and three heavy vehicles were on the bridge at the time of the collapse, he said.
"We are continuing with the rescue operations because we think there are other people alive under the rubble," Genoa police spokesperson Alessandra Bucci told Reuters.
"We have extracted people from the rubble and now we are focusing on assisting the people, and later on we will understand what caused the collapse of the bridge."
The full horror of the collapse could be seen in aerial video of the scene.
Patrick Villardry, a French firefighter who came from Nice to help the rescue effort, told AFP news agency the task was huge.
"The first victims have been evacuated and now we have to search under the wreckage of buildings, but there are thousands of tonnes of concrete," he said.
Image copyright Reuters
How important is the bridge?
The Morandi Bridge, built in the 1960s, stands on the A10 toll motorway, which serves the Italian Riviera and southern coast of France.
The missing section was dozens of metres in length, and ran across the span of the Polcevera river.
The collapse of the bridge was an "incident of vast proportions on a vital arterial road, not just for Genoa, but for the whole country", said Mr Toti.
"The Morandi bridge connects three major ports in our country, used by tens, even hundreds of thousands of people. They depart from these ports on holiday. These docks receive most of our country's imported goods. It damages the very structure of the Italian logistics system. We are expecting a very fast response from the government."
Mr Borrelli said the authorities were trying to arrange help for those affected by the disaster, as well as setting up diversions for traffic.
"What we are carrying out at the moment is a search and rescue operation for the victims and the injured, to get the victims out and recover the injured," he said.
"Then we are obviously also trying to work out how to set up a viable route that is an alternative to the motorway, and also for entry and exit from the port."
Were there any concerns about the bridge?
"It's not acceptable that such an important bridge... was not built to avoid this kind of collapse," Mr Rixi was quoted as saying by Reuters.
However, Stefano Marigliani, the Autostrade official responsible for the Genoa area, told the agency that the bridge had been "constantly monitored and supervised well beyond what the law required".
The highway operator said work to shore up its foundation was being carried out at the time of the collapse.
Repair work on the bridge was carried out in 2016, Reuters reports. Major repairs also took place in the 1990s.
Image copyright EPA
A structural engineer who lectures at Genoa University, Antonio Brencich, warned in 2016 that there were problems with the bridge, Italian media report.
The bridge's designer, Riccardo Morandi (1902-1989) had miscalculated the "viscous deformation" - an ageing effect on reinforced concrete, Mr Brencich said.
"He was an engineer with great insight but lacking in practical calculations," the lecturer said.
Italy's recently installed government has pledged to increase public investment in infrastructure.
The country spent more than €14bn (£12.5bn; $16bn) on its roads in 2006 but that had dropped to less than €4bn by 2010, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The figures cover spending on new transport construction and the improvement of the existing networks.
Spending started to increase in 2013, when total spend was less than Spain, Germany, France and the UK.
How has the world reacted?
French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted a message of sympathy to the people of Italy, writing in both Italian and French. He said France was ready to offer any necessary aid.
European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker voiced his "deepest sympathy and sincere condolences to the families and friends of those who have died, and to the Italian people".
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Firefighters with sniffer dogs were working through the night to try to find survivors beneath the rubble of a giant bridge that collapsed in the Italian port city of Genoa.
At least 26 people, including a child, died in the disaster, which happened as the city was lashed by an intense thunderstorm, but the toll was expected to rise.
Officials said 15 people were injured and 10 of them were in a critical condition. Four people were pulled alive from the rubble.
Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte called it "an immense tragedy ... inconceivable in a modern system like ours, a modern country."
Dozens of cars and trucks plunged 150ft to the ground after the elevated motorway suddenly collapsed.
