AN Italian soccer player has told of cheating death as he escaped the Genoa bridge tragedy.

Davide Capello, a fireman who used to be the goalkeeper of Cagliari football club, was driving on the Ponte Morandi bridge when it collapsed, describing his ordeal as “apocalyptic”.

“I was driving to Genoa, I was on the bridge,” Capello said, according to local newspaper La Stampa.

“I heard a noise and then it all collapsed. My car fell 30 metres and got stuck in the rubble.

“Some people helped me to get out.

“It’s incredible that I’m still alive. It’s a miracle. I don’t have a single scratch.”

Meantime, an engineering professor made a chilling call two years ago that the Morandi Bridge needed to be knocked down because of its “uneven” construction.

Antonio Brencich, an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Genoa, raised concerns about the structure of the bridge in an interview in 2016.

On Tuesday, 80 metres of the 50-year-old bridge collapsed and sent vehicles plunging 45 metres into a heap of rubble, killing 22 people.

Professor Brencich warned it would cost more to repair the “uneven” construction of the major highway in Italy’s city of Genoa.

“The Morandi bridge is referred to as a masterpiece of engineering, in reality it is a bankruptcy,” Brencich said in an interview with Italian TV station primocanale.it.
“There will be a time when maintenance costs will exceed those of reconstruction, and then we will have to proceed with the replacement.”

Italy’s leader Premier Giuseppe Conte has said 22 people have been killed and 16 injured, and he fears that the final death toll may rise. He described it as an “immense tragedy”.

Hundreds of firefighters and emergency rescue officials are racing against time to find survivors in the rubble.

The incident saw 80 metres of the 50-year-old bridge collapse, sending vehicles plunging 45 metres.

Cars fell with tonnes of twisted steel and concrete debris into a nearby river, railroad tracks and an industrial zone below.

Unidentified fire brigade sources had earlier told Italy’s ANSA news agency that as many as 35 people were killed.

Mr Conte travelled to the site of the disaster this morning saying “it is shocking to see the twisted metal and the bridge collapsed with victims who were extracted”.

He also praised the hundreds of rescue workers still at the site, saying “they saved people who fell 45 metres and are now alive and in the hospital”.

Photos and video footage of the incident have emerged, showing the devastating aftermath which has left the northern port city reeling, and the world stunned.

Witnesses have likened the scene of the horrific accident — the deadliest of its kind in Europe since 2001 — to an apocalypse.

The cause of the disaster was not immediately clear, although weather services in the Liguria region had issued a storm warning Tuesday morning.

The national motorways body said on its website that “maintenance works were being carried out on the base of the viaduct”, adding that a crane had been moved on site to assist the work.

Experts say it was almost certainly brought down by a construction flaw or long term wear and tear.

“We’re not giving up hope, we’ve already saved a dozen people from under the rubble,” said rescue official Emanuele Giffi.

“We’re going to work round the clock until the last victim is secured.

“There are buildings that have been hit but it seems that all the victims were on the bridge.”

Thanks to a public holiday on Wednesday, the industrial zone spanning the area below the highway was almost empty when Tuesday’s disaster struck.

Amalia Tedeschi, a firefighter, said dozens of vehicles had been involved in the collapse during a sudden and violent storm in Genoa.

“It was just after 11:30am [7.30pm AEST] when we saw lightning strike the bridge,” eyewitness Pietro M all’Asa was quoted as saying by Italy’s ANSA news agency.

“And we saw the bridge going down.”

Video of the collapse captured a man screaming: “Oh, God! Oh, God!”

Genoa resident Elizabeth told BBC: “The state of the bridge always concerned us. Nobody has ever crossed that bridge with a light heart.

“Everybody has always done it praying that the bridge wouldn’t fall down. Today that happened.”

Other images showed a green truck that had stopped on the bridge just short of the edge and the tires of a tractor trailer in the rubble.

“The scene is apocalyptic, like a bomb had hit the bridge,” Matteo Pucciarelli, a journalist for La Repubblica who lives in Genoa, told The Guardian.
Aerial footage showed more than 200 metres of the viaduct, known locally as the Morandi Bridge, completely destroyed.

“I’m following with the utmost apprehension what is happening in Genoa and what looks like it could be an immense tragedy,” Transport and Infrastructure Minister Danilo Toninelli said on Twitter.

Salvini, who is also leader of the nationalist League party in the coalition government, vowed to hold those responsible for the disaster accountable.

“I have gone over this bridge hundreds of times, and I commit to digging and finding out who is responsible for an unacceptable tragedy, because it’s not possible that in 2018 you can work and die in these conditions,” he said.

At least four people were pulled alive from cars in the rubble that fell into an industrial area below the bridge and were being transported by helicopter to a hospital.

Police K9 units rushed to the scene as rescue teams tried to locate survivors, as emergency services said dozens of cars were still trapped.

Ms Tedeschi said the bridge had mostly fallen on rail tracks below, taking “cars and trucks” with it.

Firefighters told Associated Press that there are concerns about gas lines.

Earlier, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said some 200 firefighters responded to the accident.

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

He later reportedly said that spending on safety of Italians should come before budget constraints.

The disaster occurred on a highway that connects Italy to France and other vacation resorts on the eve of a major Italian holiday, Ferragosto.

The Morandi Bridge is a main thoroughfare connecting the A10 highway that goes toward France and the A7 highway that continues north toward Milan.

ANSA said authorities suspected that a structural weakness caused the collapse.

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

Other images showed a green truck that had stopped on the bridge just metres short of the gaping hole in the bridge.

The Polcevera viaduct of the A10 motorway, called the Ponte Morandi bridge, crosses the Polcevera stream in Genoa between the districts of Sampierdarena and Cornigliano.

The elevated road is located over a river, railroad tracks and buildings.

The bridge, designed by the engineer Riccardo Morandi, was built between 1963 and 1967 by the Italian Society for Water Pipelines.

Genoa, home to half a million people, is located between the sea and the mountains of northwestern Italy.

Its rugged terrain means that motorways that run through the city and the surrounding area are characterised by long viaducts and tunnels.