What Do You Mean It Collapsed?!. Emergency Operators Stunned Reactions To Panicked Witnesses Who Saw The Genoa Bridge Disaster Unfold
The stunned reactions of emergency responders in the first moments after the Genoa bridge disaster on Tuesday have been revealed in newly-released recordings. Panicked witnesses called Italy’s emergency 112 number after watching the 50-year-old bridge break apart amid stormy weather.
Fearing cars would drive into the chasm one of the callers told police to send an alert out immediately while another said he had seen the disaster from his window. At least 38 people died when the reinforced concrete bridge, designed by and named after architect Riccardo Morandi, collapsed on Tuesday.
In recordings published by La Stampa, one of the first callers told the operator: ‘Listen, the Morandi Bridge collapsed, the one on the Polcevera’.
The responder answered: ‘What do you mean it collapsed?’, to which the witness replied: ‘It collapsed! How it collapsed? You go and ask them why it collapsed.’
The man told the call operator to ‘give the alert immediately before thousands of cars fall down’.
Another call began with the witness, who said he had seen the disaster from his window, reporting that ‘the Morandi viaduct came down’.
He went on: ‘The Morandi viaduct came down, the highway. Did you already get alerts? I could see it from the window. Now I can’t see anything anymore.’
The stunned responder, who first replied by asking: ‘It came down?’, recovered and said he would put the police on the line.’
In a third hurried conversation the caller, who had some difficulty making himself heard, said: ‘The Morandi Bridge came down’.
He said: ‘The Morandi bridge, the part of the bridge on the river came down. The span on the river and on the railway.’
The operator asked: ‘There’s been a collapse?’ and checked which road the accident was on and asked whether there were any injured but the caller did not know the answer.
He said: ‘I don’t know, I live here and I saw the bridge coming down. Everything trembled and the two central spans came down.’
Blocks of flats by the Genoa bridge may have to be destroyed, forcing 630 people out of their homes, the Italian government said today.
The apartment buildings have already been evacuated in the wake of the disaster due to the risk of further collapse, and residents have been stopped from returning to pick up belongings, medication or feed pets.
Both families of victims and government ministers have blamed the disaster on a lack of maintenance by Autostrade Per Italia, the private company that operates many of Italy’s toll highways.
But an Italian professor said it was poor design and incorrect calculations by the architect which had caused the disaster.
By Tim Stickings | Mailonline
