MILAN, Aug 14: A bridge on the main highway linking Italy with France collapsed Tuesday in the Italian port city of Genoa during a sudden, violent storm, sending vehicles plunging 90 meters into a heap of rubble below. The Italian transport official said at least 22 people were killed and eight seriously injured.

Amalia Tedeschi, a firefighter, told RAI state TV that some 20 vehicles, including cars and trucks, had been involved in the collapse of a stretch of the bridge some 80 meters (260 meters) in length. She said two people had been pulled alive from vehicles in the rubble, which fell into an industrial area below the bridge. Officials said they were being transported by helicopter to a hospital.

The Interior Ministry, earlier, confirmed reports by the Italian news agency ANSA that 11 people were killed and five injured, adding that the number could increase.

The private broadcaster Sky TG24 said a 200-meter section of the Morandi Bridge collapsed over an industrial zone, sending tons of twisted steel and concrete debris onto warehouses below. Firefighters told The Associated Press they were worried about gas lines exploding in the area from the collapse.

Photos published by ANSA on its website showed a huge gulf between two sections of the bridge.

Video captured the sound of a man screaming: “Oh God! Oh, God!” Other images showed a green truck that had stopped just short of the gaping hole in the bridge and the tires of a tractor-trailer in the rubble.

ANSA said authorities suspected that a structural weakness had caused the collapse, but there was no immediate explanation by authorities for why they might have thought that or what had happened.

Italy’s transport minister, Danilo Toninelli, called the collapse “an enormous tragedy.”

News agency ANSA said Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte will travel to Genoa later Tuesday. Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said some 200 firefighters were responding to the accident.

“We are following minute by minute the situation of the bridge collapse in Genoa,” Salvini said on Twitter.

The disaster occurred on a highway that connects Italy to France, and northern cities like Milan to the beaches of Liguria. It came on the eve of a major Italian summer holiday on Wednesday called Ferragosto, which means traffic was heavier than usual as Italians traveled to beaches or mountains. The Morandi Bridge is the main thoroughfare connecting the A10 highway that goes toward France and the A7 highway that continues north toward Milan. Inaugurated in 1967, it is 90 meters high, just over a kilometer long, with the longest section between supports measuring 200 meters.

The collapse of the bridge comes eight days after another major accident on an Italian highway, one near the northern city of Bologna. In that case, a tanker truck carrying a highly flammable gas exploded after rear-ending a stopped truck on the road and getting hit from behind itself. The accident killed one person, injured dozens and blew apart a section of a raised eight-lane highway.

 
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