Morandi Bridge Collapse © Valerio Bianchi | Dreamstime.com
The collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa, Italy, in 2018, was a spectacular infrastructure failure. And immediately blamed on lack of maintenance.
43 people died – and now 57 people have been prosecuted for failure to maintain, among other charges.
I was intrigued at the time, because though bridges do collapse, it’s not usually blamed on maintenance. But it is a typical issue for long-life assets, to put off repairs to save money; the point about long-life assets with slow deterioration is that people cross their fingers and hope collapse won’t happen on their watch.
In this case, it appears that nothing was done to address detectable rust in structural steel cables. To see there is rust, and not to act, is if anything even more negligent than not to inspect for rust.
Was it lack of maintenance, or poor design?
I don’t feel much sympathy with the defence argument: those who maintain and operate should surely attempt to understand if there are design issues, and it hardly matters once you can see the rust. (What do you think?)
Charges were laid against engineers, government officials and senior managers. It took almost four years of investigation before the case came to trial, another four years for the trial, and more than 280 hearings. Was it really that technical? I suspect an awful lot of defence buck-passing, and the delay took it beyond their statute of limitations for some of the charges.
This week the former head of the motorway operator was given a 12 year prison sentence, and we can only hope it does encourage the others.
Intriguingly he is already serving a sentence from a separate 2013 road disaster….
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