When bridges collapse suddenly, flaws in design or construction, or inadequate inspection and maintenance, are usually to blame. In the case of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa, Italy, which stood for half a century before falling apart Tuesday in a tangled heap of concrete and steel, both design and maintenance may be at fault, experts said. The bridge, named for its designer, Riccardo Morandi, is of the cable-stayed type, in which sections of roadway are cantilevered from towers like diving boards and supported by stays. This type of design, more common now than it was 50 years ago, is often used when the gap to be spanned is too long for the structure to be supported at both ends, but not so long that a suspension bridge would be a better solution. The stays are critical elements of this kind of design. Without them, the cantilevered sections would have to be so massive as to make the bridge too costly or otherwise impractical. And more than anything else, the stays are what made the Morandi bridge unusual: They are constructed of concrete with steel rods, called tendons, inside them, which enables the concrete to handle the pull of the roadway. More modern cable-stayed bridges use steel cables instead.<doc-sep>Finger pointing over the deadly collapse of a highway bridge in Italy intensified Thursday as Italian and European authorities sought to assign blame for the disaster, which cost at least 38 lives. The European Union shot back against accusations from Italy that it had blocked the country from spending sufficiently on the upkeep of roads and bridges. A spokesman for the EU executive, the European Commission, said the organization has recommended to Italy that it invest more in infrastructure and also has made EU funds available. The EU was responding to claims by Matteo Salvini, Italy’s interior minister and head of the nationalist League party, that European rules capping countries’ budget deficits were to blame. “Italy must be allowed to spend the money necessary to make its rivers, schools, highways and hospitals safe without there being crazy restrictions from Europe. Safety for Italians comes first,” Mr. Salvini wrote in a tweet on Thursday. Others in Italy’s government have blamed the private company that operated and maintained the bridge. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s vow to strip the company, Autostrade per l’Italia, of its concession caused shares in its majority owner, Atlantia SpA, to lose nearly a quarter of their value on Thursday. Atlantia, in which the Benetton family of clothing fame has a controlling stake, responded that the cause of the bridge collapse hasn’t been established and that it would seek compensation if the concession were revoked. Related Video A four-lane bridge has collapsed in the Italian port city of Genoa. The company that maintains the highway said work had been in progress to improve the bridge's foundations. Photo: Getty The fallout from the collapse of the bridge, located in Genoa on a freeway linking the Italian Riviera with France, has opened a debate about Italy’s decaying infrastructure. Economic stagnation, strained public finances and mismanagement in the public and private sectors now pose a deadly risk, in the view of many observers. Italy has “tens of thousands” of bridges that have exceeded their natural life spans, according to the country’s National Research Council. The Morandi Bridge, which collapsed Tuesday, dates from the 1960s, and many engineers say it wasn’t designed to handle today’s increased volume of traffic and heavy trucks. The structure didn’t have the safety redundancies present in most bridges, said Michael Chajes, a professor at the University of Delaware who specializes in finding the causes of bridge collapses. A storm occurring at the time of the collapse was unlikely to have played a role, he said. “We have to wait and see what the investigators find, but it seems the most likely cause of the collapse is that one of the stay cables corroded to the point that something happened on that day to make it snap,” said Dr. Chajes. Italy boosted its infrastructure spending in the early 2000s but has cut investments sharply since the global financial crisis. New investments in roads plunged by about two-thirds in the decade to 2015, and road-maintenance spending fell by about a third in that period, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The commission spokesman said EU countries can set their own spending priorities and noted that Italy is getting about €2.5 billion ($2.84 billion) from the EU for infrastructure investments for the 2014-2020 period. Large infrastructure projects can either be funded by the Italian government, sometimes with an EU contribution, or by private companies that then get a concession to charge tolls for using a road, bridge or tunnel. Autostrade was responsible for the safety and upkeep of the Morandi bridge, while the government was responsible for ensuring that the maintenance was being performed. As the accusations flew, firefighters and other rescue workers continued to look for survivors amid the mounds of bridge debris that plunged 150 feet onto a partially dry riverbed and train tracks. Cranes moved slabs of concrete to help rescue workers search the rubble. No survivors have been found since the immediate aftermath of the bridge’s collapse at about noon local time on Tuesday. Officials put the current death toll at 38, down from 39 announced Wednesday. Genoa’s chief prosecutor said as many as 20 people were still unaccounted for. Write to Eric Sylvers at eric.sylvers@wsj.com<doc-sep>Italy bridge collapse | Investigation Italy disaster sparks Canadian infrastructure concerns Find Your Forecast Search for a location Leeanna McLean Digital Reporter Tuesday, August 14, 2018, 8:26 PM - Recovery efforts are underway after Tuesday's deadly bridge collapse in the northern Italian port city of Genoa. A 50-metre high section of the bridge, including a tower that anchored several stays, crashed down with as many as 35 vehicles driving on it in torrential rain. Huge slabs of reinforced concrete plunged onto two warehouses, train tracks and a riverbed. PHOTOS: Devastating bridge collapse in Genoa, Italy. While the official cause of this tragic event remains under investigation, The Weather Network spoke with Doug Perovic, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto, to discuss possible contributing factors behind this catastrophic collapse. "From the information that I’ve gathered it appears that this bridge, which has been under maintenance for many years now, has suffered some form of degradation. It sounds like degradation of the concrete, which is reinforced with steel bars," said Perovic. "There’s question about the design and again, I've also read some commentary coming out of Italy, that says the reinforcement bars weren’t properly insulated or coded to prevent corrosion attack with the concrete." The 1.2 km-long bridge was completed in 1967 and overhauled in 2016. The motorway it carries is a major artery from northern Italy's industrial centres to the Italian Riviera and to France's southern coast. "You've got loading on there, this is a heavily travelled bridge I understand. So, there would have been repetitive loading that induces further sort of cumulative damage -- they call that fatigue -- but that shouldn't cause a bridge to fail," said the engineering professor. "This bridge should not have failed under these conditions. They are designed to have a margin of safety above what is normally expected, including windstorms, and if this was totally packed with cars, it should still not fail." Wind gusts up to 65 km/h were reported in the area at the time of the collapse. Some witnesses say they saw lightning strike the bridge moments before it crumbled. However, a lightning strike "isn't going to bring a bridge down," Perovic highlighted. BELOW: Moment Italy bridge collapses caught on camera "It really was a perfect storm, pardon the pun. The structure was already weakened after years of deterioration. A heavy wind gust at that very moment was enough to sort of just take it over the edge. So, that was the sort of last trigger that led to this collapse." There are two things that need to be carefully addressed in this investigation, according to Perovic. "Rain and wind should not have caused this to fail as far as degradation. Materials don't last forever, they do degrade. So, there either needs to be materials incorporated in a bridge that don't degrade for a bridge's lifetime, whatever that's defined to be, or there needs to be a stringent maintenance program to replace degraded materials and components in a sufficient amount of time before they become critical and could cause a failure." In a 2016 interview posted online, University of Genoa professor specializing in reinforced concrete construction Antonio Brencich, said the bridge required continuous maintenance and would eventually have to be torn down and replaced. When a bridge requires an excessive amount of care and attention, this can become a major problem, added the professor. "There comes a point where a decision needs to be made. Is it going to be economical, but more importantly, is it going to be a safety issue and we may actually have to cut our losses and tear this bridge down because we may miss some important aspects of deterioration, which may have happened here." The engineering professor predicts officials will likely tear down what is left of the bridge and rebuild something entirely new if a deterioration problem is identified. Riccardo Morandi, who designed the so-called Morandi bridge in Italy, is also responsible for the Lake Maracaibo bridge in Venezuela. There are concerns that the Maracaibo bridge may face a similar fate. "I'm sure they are going to look at that design by this person, with the same supposed deterioration problems," said Perovic. "Those decisions have to be made in terms of OK what is the remaining lifetime of a structure, and let's take this thing out of service if we think there may be a problem." While this disaster is tragic, Perovic said it makes officials examine the integrity of infrastructure closer to home. Take Toronto's Gardiner Expressway for example. "I teach that [Gardiner] as a case study in my forensic engineering course all of the time," he said. "That was designed back in the 50s. It's also a reinforced concrete structure, but it wasn't designed to be used with road salt. So, that's something that came after the fact, and that road salt then leaches into the concrete, swells those reinforcement bars and causes big chunks to break off and fall to the Lakeshore below, which we have heard about for many years." Falling debris can cause serious injury, but the question is, are we looking at future structural collapse? "I don't think so, I think our engineers are on top of that quite diligently," he said. "But, we really need to spend money and not sort of take chances." -- With reports from Reuters On the ground: Italy bridge collapse footage<doc-sep>Following a cabinet meeting held in the city of Genoa, Prime Minister Conte said: "We agreed to his request to declare a state of emergency in Ligura for 12 months due to the events of yesterday morning... and we decided to release €5m from the national emergency fund for immediate needs."<doc-sep>
Italian rescue workers are using jackhammers and cranes to lift giant slabs of concrete from the Genoa highway bridge collapse, hoping to find survivors buried in the rubble of the disaster in Italy that has left at least 38 people dead. Genoa's chief prosecutor said Thursday that between 10 and 20 people were still missing. On Friday, however, Italy's Civil Protection Agency said only five people were unaccounted for. A fire held up part of the operation in the early morning, sending up clouds of white smoke before being extinguished. A spark from metal-cutting equipment was thought to have caused the blaze that started in a warehouse under the ruined bridge. But the more than 300 firefighters who have been working non-stop since Tuesday resumed their task. Chances of finding survivors appeared to be slim. Vehicles on the highway that links the port city to the French border plummeted 50 metres to the ground when a 200-metre stretch of the viaduct collapsed on Tuesday. Firefighters, who are using sniffer dogs as well as heavy machinery, have not yet reached all the cars. "We are trying to find points where we can penetrate these incredibly heavy slabs. Then the earth-moving equipment moves in to create a passageway where the dogs can enter," firefighter Stefano Zanut said at the scene. Rescuers hope the large chunks of debris may have created a "triangle of survival" when they fell where someone could still be alive, he said. Apartments to be demolished Some 600 people have had to leave their apartments below the remaining spans of the bridge for fear of further collapse. The homes will be demolished as officials have deemed it would be too dangerous to leave them there. The government has said alternative housing will be found, although it may take months to house everyone again. A state funeral for many of the victims will be held on Saturday at Genoa's Exhibition and Trade Centre, led by the city's archbishop, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, and attended by President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. A priest stands by coffins of victims from the collapsed highway bridge at the Fiera di Genova exhibition centre in Genoa on Friday. (Antonio Calanni/Associated Press) But some families plan to boycott the event and hold their own private services, as a sign of protest against what they say was the negligence that caused the bridge to collapse. Italy's government launched a procedure on Friday to revoke concessions held by Autostrade per l'Italia, the company responsible for maintaining the bridge and toll highways surrounding it, Conte said. An engineering study commissioned by Autostrade last year warned about the state of the bridge's concrete-encased cable stays, Italian newspapers reported.​ Autostrade has said it monitored the bridge on a quarterly basis, as required by law, and carried out additional checks by hiring external experts. It had no immediate response to the government's move to revoke its concessions. "This disaster obliges us to take new initiatives which are much more rigorous than those adopted by previous governments," Conte said in a statement, adding that the government held responsible for Tuesday's collapse. The 51-year-old Morandi Bridge was a key artery that linked highways to Milan and France, and authorities are wrangling over who should be held responsible for its collapse. (Associated Press) The government has declared Saturday a national day of mourning. The state funeral will be televised live and broadcaster RAI will not air any advertising, as a sign of respect for the victims.