Assess errors says Autostrade (4)

(ANSA) - Rome, March 10 - Highway management and maintenance company Autostrade per l'Italia said Friday it would "assess all possible errors" over a motorway bridge collapse that killed two people Thursday.
    Meanwhile in Brussels Premier Paolo Gentiloni said the collapse showed the need for tighter "controls" but that overall the Italian road motorway system was "good". He voiced the hope that a probe into the collapse would "clarify responsibility" for the accident. Gentiloni said the government was working on "the maintenance of the territory" with a "targeted" project across Italy. Autostrade said it had "asked with extreme urgency the firms that designed and carried out the works on the bridge for a detailed report on what happened, to establish possible human errors and weigh possible legal action".
    The works on the bridge started on February 7 and was set to end on March 31, "as far as work on the pillars was concerned, to raise the flyover". Traffic was reopened in a southbound direction Friday.
    The bridge collapsed onto the A14 motorway near the central Italian city of Ancona, killing two people and injuring three others, sources said.
    The victims were named as Emidio 'Mimmo' Diomedi, 60, and his wife Antonella Viviani, 54, who had been married for 36 years.
    They lived in Spinetoli near Ascoli Piceno, where they ran a packaging business at Colli del Tronto.
    They were in a Nissan car that was travelling under the bridge, the sources said.
    The couple left two children, Daniela and Daniele, the latter a former team manager of the Sambenedettese Calcio football club. "They were two exceptional people," said Daniela Diomedi, the daughter.
    Autostrade per l'Italia said that the bridge was a temporary structure to support an overpass that had been closed to traffic.
    The collapse took place amid work to broaden the highway between the South Ancona and Loreto exits to three lanes.
    Only one car was affected by the collapse, the one in which the dead people were travelling, according to an initial reconstruction.
    The three injured people are construction workers, sources said.
    Two of them were said not to be seriously injured while the third only had bruises.
    Transport Minister Graziano Delrio sent inspectors to the scene.
    Opposition politicians said the collapse, which followed others in recent years, was "unacceptable".
    They said that traffic should have been stopped beneath the bridge while the work was being carried out.
    Some called for Delrio to resign.
    Prosecutors opened a probe into suspected culpable manslaughter.
    Highway maintenance and management company Autostrade said what had happened was a "tragic, one-off accident" and that Italy's motorway bridges were "safe". Ancona is a provincial capital in the Marche region.