Almost two years to the day after the collapse of the Genoa bridge which killed 43 people in August 2018, Italy is inaugurating a new viaduct on Monday, August 3, but without the families of the victims who consider the ceremonies to be out of place.
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President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella will be the first to officially cross by car the new bridge, a work of architect Renzo Piano. Head of government Giuseppe Conte, among others, will deliver a speech and the Air Force acrobatic patrol will fly over the city around 6.30 p.m., the official inauguration time.
An absence, however, will weigh heavily on the ceremony: that of the families of the victims who refuse to participate and will meet ten days later to mark the second anniversary of the tragedy. " We will not be present at the inauguration, we do not want the tragedy to end in carnival ", told AFP Egle Possetti, representative of the Committee of the relatives of the victims, who lost his sister in this tragedy, his brother-in-law and two nephews.
" You can have a big party like this if the bridge was destroyed because it was old, a new one was built and no one died, " he added.
On August 14, 2018, in driving rain, the Morandi motorway bridge, named after the engineer who designed it, an essential axis for trade with France but also for local journeys, collapsed, leading to its fall from dozens of vehicles, on the road to vacation or work. Among the 43 victims were four children.
The last section of the new bridge, approximately 1 km long, was laid at the end of April and since the finishing works and safety tests have followed one another to allow its final inauguration. About ten days ago, 56 trucks weighing 44 tonnes each, for a total of around 2,500 tonnes, tested the strength of the bridge.
The bridge is expected to be open to traffic on August 4 or 5 after clearing the platform and props erected for the official opening.
