Jacopo Strumia never gave much thought to the giant suspension bridge that looms over the ground floor apartment he lives in with his wife and two young children in a sleepy suburb of Genoa.
“But the bridge collapse has made us a little nervous. We hope that something like that doesn’t happen to us,” the 29-year-old first aid worker said as residents of the northern Italian city come to terms with the motorway bridge disaster that killed 38 people this week. “We look a little differently at our bridge now.”
In the residential neighborhood of Gavette, Strumia and dozens of families live in the shadow of a colossal concrete viaduct carrying thousands of vehicles a day along Italy’s A12 Motorway.
Photo: AP
The structure spans a dried-up river bed, a metal-roofed warehouse and two rows of pastel-colored flats. Dozens of other homes are built close to the superstructure.
Erected in the late 1960s and spanning almost 800m, the bridge — and how safe it is — has become a central topic for residents of this corner of north Genoa since Tuesday’s catastrophe.
In a small bar not far away, waitress Monica told customers sat around blue plastic tables how a metal bolt recently fell from the bridge onto stairs below.
“They closed them for three days,” she said, adding that she believes one of the pylons keeping the bridge upright to be water-damaged.
The structure is omnipresent in Gavette — there is barely a street from where its carriageways or support pillars are not visible and the noise of vehicles speeding along it is incessant.
Vittorio Depau, an elderly Gavette resident, said that the bridge receives regular maintenance and its columns were reinforced about 10 years ago.
“They said it was guaranteed [to last] 100 years,” said Depau, who was sat on a terrace with a group of friends under the soaring bridge. “I’m not worried. I’m used to it, I spend my days here. I just hope that if it does collapse, I’m not here when it happens.”
Genoa, ensconced between the sea and the mountains, is crisscrossed with viaducts and tunnels due to its rugged terrain. The bridges spanning the city until this week were just part of everyday life: constant, unmoving and unthought of.
“I was born and raised here, I’ve always known this bridge,” said resident Fabrizio, who has an uninterrupted view of the structure from his living room.
He said he is not worried about it collapsing, as the flat is not directly underneath, but added: “Still, it all depends on how it falls.”
In a narrow passageway zigzagging beneath the viaduct, 59-year-old Maria Dondero was bringing a hot meal to an elderly woman she knows, who lives at the end of the street.
“I don’t live here, but now whenever I go under the bridge I look up,” she said.
“Living under a motorway bridge isn’t easy,” Strumia said, stood in the entrance to his apartment next to a tile depicting the Virgin Mary.
Even if he did not expect it to collapse, he said that there is always the worry that a vehicle could lose control and tumble onto the houses beneath.
“For the moment [we will stay here],” he said. “We are going to look into moving perhaps. We would need to sell the flat... After this tragedy that won’t be easy.”
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