*BREAKING* A bridge collapses near Genova, Italy

The guy who was driving the green truck will be praying loudest of all this Sunday at Mass. He will also swear off drunkenness and messing around on his wife. This might last for two weeks or so.

Genoa. Not Genova.

And this happened just one day before the biggest national holliday in Italy, when half the country shuts down and the summer holiday officially begin. I'm sure some of those poor people on the bridge were already headed to the beach.

That picture is horrific. Those poor people.

Who in their right mind would live in a house under a bridge?

Holy shit. What a nightmare.

R2, pardon me for butting in, but isn’t that another name for the city? Like “Roma” vs. “Rome” or “Wien” vs. “Vienna”? We knew people from Milan, and if you asked the wife, she’d say “MeeeLaaaaaNo”.

I could be wrong, of course.

Eleven killed and dozens more feared dead

The head of the local ambulance service said there were 'dozens of dead' in the 'immense tragedy' . Cars fell 300ft

Corriere della Sera:

Genova, crolla ponte sull’A10. Ci sono almeno 22 morti I soccorritori: «Qui è l’inferno» - «Oh mio Dio!» - video Che cosa sappiamo finora

Liza heard about this on the news this morning and thought she was watching a remake of Final Destination 5 at first.

R1, I think about the guy in this truck who probably did the same Also in Italy.

Imagine being that last car to go through before it collapsed

R7 of course you're wrong. Embarrassed for you and lack of education. Work out you logic with "Vienna".😅

R5 There was no house under the bridge.

R7, you DO know Austria translates to Eastern Reich, non? Rube.

oh my god that video is chilling

What video R15? The Hollywood one?

R13, you can see there are apt buildings under the bridge. Are all of those buildings empty?

R17 Oh, apologies, I thought you meant under the collapsed section.

I figured, R18. I meant I wouldn't want to live anywhere at any point under a bridge. Any part of that thing could collapse. I'd rather live across the street from a cemetery.

Aren’t there buildings under the collapsed section? It looks like there are and some were crushed others not impacted.

All that strained pasta going to waste :-(

Yikes!

R20 That's one of the towers which collapsed. This graphic from the BBC shows how relatively lucky there were that it's that section which collapsed as there're no buildings under it.

R19 I'm guessing they don't have much of a choice - low rent due to it being under a bridge, or maybe public housing. Or living there before the bridge went up and the loss of value meant it'd be uneconomic to sell up.

R23 thank you for explaining, that does seem extremely fortunate for the people who live there.

R23 is why I still love DL (sometimes).

Substandard Mafia construction.

It says the bridge was last renovated in 2016. I'm sorry, but bridges don't fall down just like that, no matter how bad the weather. I'm guessing it was a case of shoddy renovation, possibly overseen by mafia.

P.S. I hope Santa Madonna kept Matthias Vanelli unharmed.

[quote]pardon me for butting in, but isn’t that another name for the city?

R7, It's not "another" name for the city, it's the Italian name for the city. Genova=Genoa, Roma=Roma, Firenze=Florence. Genoa, Florence, etc. are the names used by foreigners.

^^Sorry, Roma=Rome.

I’ve driven over that bridge. Feeling blessed to be alive.

[QUOTE][R23] is why I still love DL (sometimes).

I'll only end up disappointing you, R25.

[QUOTE]It says the bridge was last renovated in 2016

The BBC, quoting Reuters, says some work was being done on the foundations:

[QUOTE]Work to shore up the foundation of the bridge was being carried out at the time of the collapse but the structure was constantly monitored, the motorway operator was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Them saying "motorway operator" makes me wonder if it's a private company which runs the motorway on behalf of the government - and so likely cuts corners whenever it can to boost profits.

[quote] Genova=Genoa, Roma=Roma, Firenze=Florence. Genoa, Florence, etc. are the names used by foreigners.

Those names are used by Italians, but not by everyone else. For instance, Rome is also known by these exonyms in some other languages: Rzym, Ruma, Rooma, Rom, Rim, Romo, Romu...

R5

The DL Trolls, for example live under bridges, that is who.

In fact I decided to look at the Reuters article and sure enough, the bridge was managed by a private company

[QUOTE]Shares in Atlantia, the toll road operator which runs the motorway, were suspended after falling 6.3 percent after news of the collapse.

[quote]Those names are used by Italians, but not by everyone else.

Well, it is their country.

This is precisely what I was saying when I said that Rome, Florence and Genoa are the names used by foreigners.

And yet not word one from MSNBC or CNN despite having happened about four hours ago. Shamefull. I don't know about Faux since it's not in my DirecTV package, but I've been flipping from on to the other and not a word. Considering the hard on CNN had for the Malaysian plane, you'd think they'd hop on this disaster, but no; we get wall to wall fucking Omarosa.

Everyone always forgets Turin.

Sounds kinda mafia.

@DavideCN12 Follow Follow @DavideCN12 Replying to @nytimes i'm italian. 11 people death, at least 20 dead are feared. a controversy is growing because our highways are private although built by the state and maintenance is not done

Io amo Torino!

[quote]Everyone always forgets Turin.

And Venice.

I'm worried about my shipment of salami

Bridge collapse in Minneapolis a few years back. Major freeway.

That picture is crazy...it looks like something from a CGI Hollywood disaster movie but it's real.

Those poor people.

Lots of America's bridges are crumbling.

Thirty-five dead including an infant and yet our media have got jack shit about it.

you know who owns Autostrade Italiane, now a private joint? the Benetton family. yes, the sweaters ones. they have a lot of explaining to do i guess

thoughts and prayers

Not at all surprised this happened in Italy land of bureaucratic incompetence, financial mismanagement, endemic corruption and a crumbling infrastructure.

It's hot as hell here but I put on my over sized sweater and I'm cradling a mug on my window seat. Looking pensive....reflecting....

Poor R12. International travel must be confusing. Venezia, Firenze, Köln, Bretagne...

Was the Mothman there?

Do you mean falena-man?

Why in the hell would the driver of that green truck stop there, instead of putting it in reverse or turning around? Does he think the rest of the bridge in incapable of falling down?

Probably in shock I'd imagine.

The hot guy who surfed a piece of concrete to the ground -- David Capello, 33, said "I heard a dull sound, I saw the road going down and I was going down with her. I was lucid and I immediately called the firemen, then my family, it was shocking, I feel miraculous".

The Sun has many great pictures from this collapse.

Italy and France have the hottest rescue workers. Such handsome men coming to save us. Makes my loins a-quiver....

Since we're discussing exonyms--

Genoa: Gênes (French), Zêna (Genoese/Ligurian)

And Turin is the Piedmontese name (pronounced with a 'u' similar to French) for Italian Torino.

Thank goodness that hot guy survived. I need to fly to Italy, and give him some "counseling"

I have a forensic/structural engineer in my family and he holds his breath crossing some aging bridges in this country.

Some of our own infrastructure whether it be railway crossings, bridges,sewers, airports,highways,dams, electric grid,are no better than the third world.

There's sparse available tax money for infrastructure but we can spend 2 Billion $ a DAY on our global military adventures.

Wasn't the fat ass in the White House going to do something about our infrastructure? I think he blabbed about that at one point in his campaign. Now...ziltch!

Obama didn't do much either - didn't hear much about those shovel ready projects after awhile...

Genova IS the actual Italian name for the city Americans and Brits call Genoa, just as Padova is the actual Italian name for the city Americans and Brits call Padua.

r7 is correct. r2 & r12 are WRONG.

[quote] didn't hear much about those shovel ready projects after awhile...

Depends who you talked with.

Obama wanted to do infrastructure, Republicans wouldn't fund it.

You mean during that year the Dems controlled Congress and Obama putzed around with "consensus?"

r63 So because you never say a shovel ready project outside your trailer park it never happened? I'm sure you were paying attention to all the government funded construction in the country.

r67, please go fuck yourself

The infrastructure of this thread is disintegrating.

rt2

Say what you mean!

I'm surprised at how little news coverage this is getting.

Weak, r68

Weaker, r69

terrible Week for italian highways. a few days ago the huge explosion near Bologna, now this. what the fuck!

It's a fucking disaster.

This bridge was problematic since the beginning in early 60's,and for decades millions were spent to try and fix it,and just like a broken vase you try to glue together it finally collapsed. The money spent to fix it are more or less 80% the cost of the bridge itself. This is a tragedy that could have been avoided decades ago. In 2016 a group of engineers from different universities made their concerns public about the bridge stability and were ignored.

The victims right now are 40 and it's not even over yet because other 15 are in critical condition and many are still under, and they were lucky all the factories under the bridge were pretty much empty for summer vacation.

The thread name is so meta.

Its been reported a crane was working on the bridge at the time of the collapse. I believe the same was true of the bridge in Minn

And the award for the most light-hearted coverage of this tragedy goes to...

But for a support stand to go down -- that is really fucked.

There was mob construction involved in the Twin Towers as well, built around the same time...

That's the conspiracy

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Any news? Did they find out who was responsible for the collapse?

Italy wants to go rogue against EU and increase its deficit past the 3% limit to do massive infrastructure work. All that work must be so corrupt, as in many countries.

The Mafia is certainly to blame with a lot of the infrastructure problems, but also poor planning controls (though that likely is due to Mafia influence too).

On one of the Daily Mail articles about this, the discussants mentioned that the metal bridge reinforcements had been showing rust for years. The bridge needed to be closed, taken apart, metal reinforcements cleaned of rust and encased in all new concrete. Then the bridge might have been safe.

One other commenter made a quip: "It's the old joke... Heaven: The police are British The cooks are French The engineers are German The administrators are Swiss The lovers are Italian Hell: The police are German The cooks are British The engineers are Italian The administrators are French The lovers are Swiss."

Rot would take out a span. A support collapsed, that's what got me.

A new bridge has been inaugurated tonight: