New Car Found in Rubble of Collapsed Genoa Bridge

Another car has been found by rescue workers searching the rubble of a collapsed motorway bridge in the northern Italian city of Genoa, local authorities said on Saturday.

Spokespeople for the fire brigade and the Genoa prefecture said the car - which was found under slabs of concrete - was “compatible” with one believed to carry a family of three, but neither updated the death toll, still officially at 38.

Rescuers have been working to search for survivors since Tuesday, Aug. 14, after a 200-meter (660-foot) stretch of the Morandi bridge gave way in busy lunchtime traffic, plunging dozens of vehicles 50m (160 feet) below.

Officials said on Friday, Aug. 17, that there still may be up to 20 people missing.

The collapsed Morandi Bridge is seen in the Italian port city of Genoa, Italy August 14, 2018. Reuters/Stefano Rellandini

‘Triangle of Survival’

Firefighters lifting away the rubble on Friday said they had not given up hope of finding someone alive three days after the collapse.

Rescuer Stefano Zanut said there was a “triangle of survival” where rubble or beams form a protective cover.

“We are working in synchronization with earth-moving equipment and sniffer dogs,” Zanut told Reuters at the site.

Rescuers use heavy equipment to sift through the rubble and wreckage of the Morandi motorway bridge, in Genoa on August 16, 2018. Piero Cruciatti/AFP/Getty Images

“We are trying to find points where we can penetrate this incredibly heavy rubble. Then the earth-moving equipment moves in to create an opening from where the dogs enter,” said Zanut, one of some 340 firefighters working shifts at the scene since Tuesday.

Emotional Funeral for Victims

Relatives and friends gathered on Friday for the emotional funeral of four friends who died in the bridge collapse in Genoa.

The Basilica of Santa Croce in the southern town of Torre del Greco was packed as hundreds of people arrived to pay their respects.

Hundreds of people packed into the square outside.

Some accused the state of inadequate oversight and regulation of the bridge operator.

“My son didn’t die he was killed because the state did not look after its citizens. It’s not just my son that is dead, 40 people are dead and they are still digging,” said Roberto Battiloro, father of Giovanni Battiloro, a young man killed in the collapse.

In Genoa on Saturday, relatives and mourners gathered next to the coffins of the victims ahead of a state funeral.

Displays of white roses lay on the top of the 19 coffins which stood in rows in a convention hall at the Exhibition and Trade Centre in the northern port city.

A small white coffin carrying a child stood out amongst the others.

Many of the victims’ families have boycotted the event and held their own private services for their dead, as a sign of protest that what they say was a tragedy that should never have happened.

A relative holds a teddy bear as she mourns near the coffin of a victim of the collapsed Morandi highway bridge, prior to the start of the funeral service, in Genoa, on August 18, 2018. Piero Cruciatti/AFP/Getty Images

Savona mayor, Ilaria Caprioglio, said Italy must look at the security of its infrastructure and a tragedy such as this should never be allowed to happen again.

Relatives mourn by coffins of the victims of the Morandi bridge disaster at the Fiera di Genova exhibition centre ahead of a state funeral service on August 18, 2018 in Genoa, Italy. Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Crumbled ‘Like Papier-Mâché’

The 51-year-old bridge, part of a toll motorway linking the port city of Genoa with southern France, collapsed during torrential rain on Tuesday, sending dozens of vehicles crashing onto a riverbed, a railway, and two warehouses.

“The scene is apocalyptic, like a bomb had hit the bridge,” Matteo Pucciarelli, a journalist for the Italian daily La Repubblica, told the Guardian shortly after the bridge toppled on Tuesday.

“People are in shock.”

Footage of the collapse, with cries from an onlooker—“Oh God! Oh God!”—showed a flash of light as the bridge crumbled out of view.

Rescuers have worked around the clock since the vast span gave way, combing through the debris for survivors.

“We’re not giving up hope, we’ve already saved a dozen people from under the rubble,” a fire official, Emanuele Giffi, told AFP. “We’re going to work round the clock until the last victim is secured.”

Firefighters carry a body at the collapsed Morandi Bridge site in the port city of Genoa, Italy, on Aug. 14, 2018. Stefano Rellandini/Reuters

Eyewitness Ivan, 37, evacuated from a nearby building, described the collapse as unbelievable.

“To see a pylon come down like papier-mâché is an incredible thing,” he said. “It’s been a lifetime that we’ve known there were problems. It is in continual maintenance. In the ‘90s they added some reinforcements on one part, but also underneath you can see rust.”

‘Imposing the Highest Penalties Possible’

Furious government ministers lashed out at the bridge operator, saying it should pay for the disaster and lose its concession.

Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said the private company that operated the bridge had earned “billions” from tolls but “did not spend the money they were supposed to.”

“Imposing the highest penalties possible and making sure that those responsible for the dead and the injured pay up for any damages and crimes is the very least,” Salvini said.

Italy’s deputy prime minister, Luigi Di Maio, said in a Facebook post on Aug. 15, “Those responsible for the tragedy in Genoa have a name and a surname, and they’re called Autostrade per l’Italia.”

“For years it’s been said that private management would be better than that of the state,” Di Maio said. “And so today, we have one of the biggest dealers in Europe telling us that the bridge was safe and there was no worry of it collapsing. Autostrade had to maintain it but didn’t.”

Autostrade, a unit of Milan-listed Atlantia group, said it had done regular, sophisticated checks on the structure before the disaster, relying on “companies and institutions, which are world leaders in testing and inspections” and that these had provided reassuring results.

“These outcomes have formed the basis for maintenance work approved by the Transport Ministry in accordance with the law and the terms of the concession agreement,” it said.

Danilo Toninelli, the infrastructures and transport minister,  said on Wednesday the collapse was “unacceptable” and that if negligence was a factor “whoever made a mistake must pay.”

Autostrade’s Genoa area director, Stefano Marigliani, called the collapse “unexpected and unpredictable.”

“Queues of cars and the volume of traffic cause intense decay of the Morandi viaduct structure on a daily basis,” Marigliani said, the Daily Mail reported.

“The bridge was constantly monitored and supervised well beyond what the law required,” he said. “There was no reason to consider the bridge dangerous.”

Autostrade was about to launch a 20 million euro ($23 million) bidding process for major safety improvements to the bridge.

The tender would have covered strengthening of the bridge’s pier cables, including those of pier nine, the one that collapsed on Tuesday.

Italian prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into the cause of the disaster.

Engineering experts say it’s too early to say why the bridge disintegrated, but point to a history of problems with its design.

‘A Tragedy Waiting to Happen’

The aging bridge, designed by the renowned Italian engineer Riccardo Morandi, was fraught with “structural doubts.”

That is how an article in the specialist engineering website Ingegneri.info referred to the structure, calling it “a tragedy waiting to happen.”

In its design, Morandi used a patented prestressed reinforced concrete technology, which later proved problematic.

The collapsed Morandi Bridge is seen in the Italian port city of Genoa, Italy. Reuters/Stefano Rellandini

Antonio Brencich, a professor of reinforced concrete construction at the University of Genoa, told Radio Capitale that Morandi’s technology “was affected by extremely serious corrosion problems” and was over time shown “to be a failure.”

Guido De Roeck, professor emeritus at KU Leuven, a university in Belgium, told VRT news a vulnerable point of Morandi’s design was the “limited number of cables, not steel cables, but pretensioned concrete cables, which are subject to corrosion.”

But while rusting metal parts are by definition the weakest link in a construction like Morandi’s, it is very unlikely that corrosion bad enough to cause a collapse would have gone unnoticed, according to Agathoklis Giaralis, deputy director of the University of London’s Civil Engineering Structures Research Centre, who spoke to the Daily Mail.

“I would say that most probably something went wrong with the foundation or supporting ground rather than with the pier, the deck, or the cables,” he said.

Ian Firth, former president of The Institution of Structural Engineers, told the Daily Mail, “It is too early to say what caused the tragic collapse, but as this reinforced and prestressed concrete bridge has been there for 50 years it is possible that corrosion of tendons or reinforcement may be a contributory factor.”

In the wake of the disaster, Giuseppe Conte, the prime minister, said that “all infrastructure” across the country needed to be double-checked. “We must not allow another tragedy like this to happen again.”

Toninelli echoed these concerns, saying that many structures in Italy suffer from insufficient safety checks.

“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.

Italian civil engineering association CNR reportedly said structures as old as the collapsed Morandi bridge had exceeded their lifespan.

Tens of thousands of bridges and viaducts built in the 1950s and 1960s should be repaired or replaced.

Updating and reinforcing the bridges, CNR said, the Telegraph reported, would in many cases be more expensive than demolishing them and building new structures from scratch.

John Smithies of The Epoch Times and Reuters contributed to this report