Ololade Adeyanju & Agency Report/
At least 22 people have been killed including a baby and dozens more are feared dead after a huge 260ft section of a highway bridge collapsed during a fierce storm in Genoa, Italy.
Cars fell 300ft along with tonnes of twisted steel and concrete debris into a river, railroad tracks and an industrial zone below when the Morandi bridge gave way at 11.30am local time.
Video captured a man screaming “oh god, oh, god” as the bridge went down.
Emergency workers said there were “dozens of dead” in what the transport minister called “an immense tragedy”.
One witness described the carnage as “apocalyptic” while rescuers are fearful damaged gas lines could explode.
Incredibly, two people have been pulled alive from cars found in the mangled ruins of the bridge.
Dramatic footage shows trucks and cars stranded on either side of the collapsed section of the bridge, which was built on the A10 toll motorway in northwestern Italy in the 1960s and which was undergoing repairs.
The exact cause of the disaster, the latest in a string of bridge collapses in Italy, is not yet clear but Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli said it showed the dilapidated state of the country’s infrastructure and a lack of maintenance, adding that “those responsible will have to pay”.
Earlier, he said in a tweet that he was “following with great apprehension what seems like an immense tragedy”.
Italy’s anti-establishment government which took office in June has pledged to increase public investments and lobby the European Commission to have the extra spending excluded from EU deficit calculations.
“The tragic facts in Genoa remind us of the public investments that we so badly need,” said Claudio Borghi, economics spokesman of the right-wing League party, which governs with the 5-Star Movement.
The office of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said he was heading to Genoa in the evening and would remain there on Wednesday.
Defence minister Elisabetta Trenta said the army was ready to offer manpower and vehicles to help with the rescue operations.
Firefighters searching the rubble with dogs for survivors have so far rescued two survivors and one has been flown to hospital by helicopter.
An official with Italian firefighters, Amalia Tedeschi, said some 20 vehicles, including cars and trucks, had been involved in the collapse. She confirmed that two injured people had been extracted alive from vehicles.
Tedeschi said that sniffer dogs are at work in the rubble looking for more injured and victims. Heavy equipment was being moved in so they could lift pieces of the bridge. She said the part of the bridge that collapsed was about 80 yards long.
A witness told Sky Italia television he saw several vehicles on the bridge when it collapsed.
Some 600ft of the Morandi bridge collapsed over an industrial zone, raising concerns gas lines may have been damaged.
The disaster occurred on a highway that connects Italy to France and other vacation resorts on the eve of a major Italian holiday, Ferragosto, meaning traffic would have been heavier than usual as many Italians traveled to beaches or mountains.
Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said some 200 firefighters were responding to the accident.
“We are following minute by minute the situation for the bridge collapse in Genoa,” Salvini said on Twitter.
Shares in Atlantia, the toll road operator which runs the motorway, were suspended after falling 4.6 percent after news of the collapse.
The Morandi Bridge, the work of celebrated Italian civil engineer Riccardo Morandi who died in 1989, was inaugurated in 1967.
It is 90 yards high, just over three-quarters of a mile long, with the longest section between supports measuring 200 yards.
Restructuring work was carried out in 2016. The highway operator said work to shore up the foundation of the bridge was being carried out at the time of the collapse, adding that the bridge was constantly monitored.
The bridge is a main thoroughfare connecting the A10 highway that goes toward France and the A7 highway that continues north toward Milan.
Another Morandi bridge in Venezuela, built to a similar design to the one in Genoa, partially collapsed in 1964 after being hit by an oil tanker.
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