Autostrade agrees to pay for the reconstruction of the Genoa bridge

Milan - The Italian company Autostrade per l'Italia has agreed to pay for the reconstruction of the bridge in Genoa, where dozens of people died during its collapse in mid-August last year. This was announced today by Italian Minister of Transport Danilo Toninelli. According to sources from the Reuters agency, the company is prepared to spend up to 439 million euros (approximately 11 billion CZK) on the bridge reconstruction.

Autostrade per l'Italia was the operator of the bridge. An investigative committee of the Italian Ministry of Transport concluded at the end of September that the company had not taken adequate measures to prevent the bridge's collapse, even though the risk of collapse had existed in previous years.

At that time, the company rejected the committee's criticism and described the findings of the ministry's expert committee as "a hypothesis that needs to be verified." Nevertheless, it allocated 500 million euros (almost 13 billion CZK) for the construction of a new bridge and for compensation for the bereaved and people who lost their homes due to the collapse of the structure.

The Morandi Bridge in Genoa, built in the mid-1960s and named after its designer, was located on a busy highway route and connected the Italian inland with both the Italian and French Riviera. A section of it collapsed on August 14, falling about 45 meters onto around thirty cars, including a Czech truck whose driver survived the accident. Forty-three people died in the tragedy.