AT least 35 people have been killed and 16 injured after a bridge collapsed in Genoa yesterday.
Italy’s prime minister Giuseppe Conte travelled to the site of the disaster yesterday evening in the port city, calling it an “immense tragedy”.
He said that “it is shocking to see the twisted metal and the bridge collapsed with victims who were extracted”.
Conte also praised the hundreds of rescue workers still at the site, saying “they saved people who fell 45 metres and are now alive and in the hospital”.
READ MORE: Video captures horrifying moments of motorway bridge collapse in Genoa
He added that the death toll is expected to rise further.
A huge section of the Morandi Bridge fell at midday over an industrial zone, sending tonnes of twisted steel and concrete on to warehouses below. Photographs showed a massive gap between two sections of the bridge. The collapse happened during heavy rain, with police reporting a violent cloudburst.
The head of Italy’s civil protection agency, Angelo Borrelli, said up to 35 cars and at least three trucks were on the 80-metre section of the span that collapsed.
Hundreds of firefighters and emergency officials were searching for survivors in the rubble with heavy equipment. At least four people were pulled alive from vehicles under the bridge.
Video of the collapse captured a man screaming: “Oh, God! Oh, God!”
Other images showed a green truck that had stopped on the bridge just short of the edge and the tyres of a tractor trailer in the rubble.
One man who was standing under the bridge in front of his truck when the bridge collapsed 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 metres 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, as he walked away from the devastating scene.
Fears that other parts of the bridge might fall have prompted the evacuation of buildings in the area, according to a rescue.
Meanwhile, 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 said that 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, dropped 6.3% after news of the collapse.
The disaster occurred on a motorway that connects Italy to France, and northern cities like Milan to the beaches of Liguria. The Morandi Bridge connects the A10 highway that goes toward the French Riviera and the A7 highway that continues north toward Milan. Inaugurated in 1967, it is just over six miles long.
READ MORE: Two dead and scores injured after tanker explodes
French president Emmanuel Macron offered his country’s help in a phone call with Conte.
It was the second deadly disaster on an Italian highway in as many weeks.
On August 6, a tanker truck carrying 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.
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