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.
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