Italian Bridge Collapse

[Gangster Octopus]

Sounds bad.

[Moonlight Shadow]

The inquiry is going to reveal some serious shit during construction you can bet....

[Sits]

What an absolute nightmare.

[blameless]

Bloody awful news. I don't care what the weather was doing, a massive motorway bridge like that shouldn't just collapse without warning.

This is going to be one of those cases where 20 people are found guilty of manslaughter, only to serve no prison time because the Italian statute of limitations for that type of criminal negligence is about 2 years, isn't it?

[ursus arctos]

The bridge was more than 50 years old, so those involved in its design and construction (including the engineer whose name it bears) are almost certainly dead.

The outcome you envision is more likely if the inquiry finds the primary fault to lie in its maintenance.

[Nefertiti2]

I read there was renovation work done in 2016

[hobbes]

It's horrific. A 200m section dropping out from below you (or on to you.) it doesn't bear thinking about.

[Guy Profumo]

The bridge was more than 50 years old, so those involved in its design and construction (including the engineer whose name it bears) are almost certainly dead.

The outcome you envision is more likely if the inquiry finds the primary fault to lie in its maintenance.

Or that it had reached its design life (as advised when it was built) and then everyone went "how much to build a new one? - Nah. We'll carry on with the old one"?

[ursus arctos]

I've seen reports of significant reconstruction (replacement of cables, etc) in the early 90s, as well as a 2016 article by an engineering professor in a technical journal arguing that its need for constant maintenance counseled in favour of its demolition and reconstruction.

There is also significant damage on the ground.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Friends of mine drove over that very bridge around 5 weeks ago, on their mini-honeymoon.

Weird how that kind of thing makes it hit closer to home.

[ursus arctos]

It carried the motorway; anyone who arrived or left the airport in a vehicle would have gone over it.

Now there are reports that there was in fact maintenance work being performed on the bridge.

And a witness has now said that a lightning strike initiated the collapse.

[Moonlight Shadow]

I saw an oil tanker explode after a lightning stike in Genoa harbor, i was on a train chugging along the industrial harbor...

[Janik]

Bloody awful news. I don't care what the weather was doing, a massive motorway bridge like that shouldn't just collapse without warning.

It's the third motorway bridge collapse in Italy in the last two years, apparently (based on this agency article from 2017). Comfortably the most serious, given the height of the structure and the span that has come down, of course.

[Nefertiti2]

Grillo speaking against the construction of a new bridge

https://twitter.com/DanieleRaineri/status/1029375269298233344

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/DanieleRaineri/status/1029371116270313472

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/FrancescoNicoli/status/1029373534852866048

[adams house cat]

Depending on who you read there are maybe thousands of time expired bridges in the US. There was a collapse in Minnesota a few years ago. It's only a matter of time.

[Guy Profumo]

Thank you for that insight, BBC.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45188668

Genoa bridge collapse: What might be responsible?


"A major bridge like this needs regular inspection and maintenance by qualified engineers. This bridge has had quite a lot of maintenance work," says Ian Firth, past president of the UK-based Institution of Structural Engineers, and a structural engineer specialising in bridges.


"Some maintenance intervention appears to have been going on at the time, but we don't know the details so it is not possible to say whether this could have been a factor [in the collapse]," he told BBC News.

[Nefertiti2]

this thread by Alberto Nardelii is good

https://twitter.com/AlbertoNardelli/status/1029619567608426496

[Kevin S]

Saw the name Ian Firth pop up on Newsnight as a bridge structural engineer and thought, 'There's another one for the nominative determinism thread.'

But my word, this is nightmarishly horrific.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

What is the M5S deal with infrastructure? Is it simply harvesting the votes of people who don't want motorway works in their back yard? or is it that italian infrastructure contracts are so dubious that they repel people? Or is it simply indicative of a wider worldview that doesn't understand how anything works in practice?

[Ginger Yellow]

Still not sure why being built off of protest movements means you're anti-infrastructure. With high speed rail, I can kind of see it given that they tend to involve compulsory purchase orders, which are unpopular. But who protests against bridge maintenance?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Hey, every unravelling clientelist culture needs a party represent the people who simply want to say "Fuck all spending that isn't on me directly, Give me my shit." This is sad, because there's a baseline of spending you need to carry out, to keep your current sweet thing going. (in this instance, an Italy where bridges don't fall on people)

[Nefertiti2]

and the default postion that "the State are ripping us off"

it's not always just the state

https://twitter.com/Ian_Fraser/status/1029685849544425473

[Moonlight Shadow]

It's down to sustainable growth, i think on this one deep ecology thinking is behind the "policy", essentially stop building stuff, the planet can't cope anymore.