Italy has been inaugurated on Monday 3 August, the new bridge over the Genoa. Two years ago, almost to the day, the viaduct Morandi, collapsed, causing the death of 43 people, mostly motorists who used the bridge at the fateful moment. On Monday 3 August, the families of these victims have decided not to take part in the ceremonies, deeming them displaced.
“We will not be present at the inauguration, we do not want the tragedy ends in carnival,” was explained to AFP before the ceremony Egle Possetti, representative of the Committee of relatives of the victims who lost in this tragedy, his sister, his brother-in-law and two nephews. “We can do a big party like this if the bridge was destroyed because it was old, it was built a new and that nobody died,” he estimated.
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jets of the aerobatic team of the Air force dropping flares in the colours of the Italian flag flew over the new bridge of San Giorgio on the background of rainbow at the time when the Prime minister, Giuseppe Conte cut the ribbon at the end of the afternoon, while the sirens of the port of the city screaming in every wind. “43 stars will shine up high every night,” said Giuseppe Conte while lit lights placed at the top of the pillars to pay tribute to the victims whose names were read aloud. The president of the Republic Sergio Mattarella was the first to cross officially drive the new bridge, designed by the famous architect Renzo Piano. “We are torn between the pain and the pride,” commented soberly the architect.
The “model Genes”
August 14, 2018, under a heavy rain, the motorway bridge Morandi, the name of the engineer who designed it, a key area for trade with France, but also for journeys on the local, had collapsed, resulting in its fall, dozens of vehicles, on the road vacation or for work. Among the 43 victims were four children. Since then, the Italy known as a champion of slowness in the execution of public works has gone to great lengths and completed the bridge in April, to the point that we are talking about today in the peninsula of the “model Genes”.
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The last section of the long bridge of about one kilometer, has been placed at the end of April and, since then, the work of finishing and testing of safety have succeeded to allow its opening. There are a dozen days, 56 trucks, each weighing 44 tons, or about 2 500 tonnes in total, were thus tested its strength. The bridge should be opened to traffic on Tuesday or Wednesday after having been stripped of the stage and props prepared for the official opening.
A legal battle still in progress
The building was built by a consortium of several Italian companies from a project of Renzo Piano, born in Genoa, and who notably designed the Pompidou Centre and the new Palace of justice of Paris. White and profile, it has a bit the shape of the hull of a boat, a tribute to the maritime history of the city. “It is a bridge (…) that does its work in silence, uniting the two slopes of a valley, it is also an urban bridge, as the valley is in the city but he is also the son of a tragedy”, recently said Renzo Piano.
the collapse of The bridge resulted in a bitter legal battle, still ongoing. The bench of the accused are many people and companies, but the finger is pointed especially to the company autostrade per l’italia (Aspi), manager of the viaduct road and whose main shareholder is the family Benetton through Atlantia. At the end of a standoff with the government in Rome, which began after the fall of the bridge, and with a still ongoing investigation but have highlighted serious shortcomings concerning the maintenance of the bridge, the family Benetton has finally agreed to two weeks ago out of the Italian railway with a nationalization partial Aspi. The preliminary investigation should be completed in October and the trial itself must begin at the beginning of next year, said Mr Possetti.
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