The floods in Italy have consequences. A major road bridge in Calabria collapsed. A politician posted the video on Facebook and used it for a dig.
Rome/Longobucco in Cosentino – Heavy rains caused flooding in Italy at the beginning of May, especially in Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy. But there were cloudbursts in the south too. In Calabria, a bridge on the Sila Mare road was washed away. This is an important link between the west coast (Tyrrhenian Sea) of the toe of the Italian peninsula and the east coast (Ionian Sea). The bridge over the Trionto river collapsed near the town of Longobucco in Cosentino. The otherwise tranquil river had swollen to a raging torrent.
Heavy storms in Italy: the bridge collapses in front of the camera
No one was injured as the bridge was closed in time. Nevertheless, the collapse of the bridge has political consequences: The Greens politician Angelo Bonelli posted a video of the collapse on his Facebook page – and shares against Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini from the right-wing league: “Matteo Salvini wants to waste 15 billion euros to build a useless and to build harmful structures like the bridge over the Strait of Messina while Italy sinks and the bridges collapse. This policy is a crime against the environment and against Italians’ money!” said Bonelli, spokesman for the Europa Verde party.
Salvini, who is also deputy prime minister under Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of the post-fascist Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party, announced in February the construction of a bridge from mainland Calabria to Sicily. Salvini praised the 3.6-kilometer-long planned bridge as “the largest public structure on the European continent this century, the dream of millions of Italians for centuries”. However, scientists warn of earthquakes in the Strait of Messina with a magnitude of up to 7.1 and wind speeds of up to 270 kilometers per hour. For comparison, the 2021 Haiti earthquake had an amplitude of 7.2 and killed 2,200 people.
Italy’s mega-bridge to Sicily failed even under Berlusconi
At the beginning of the 2000s, the then Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was already planning the mega bridge to Sicily – the project was buried at the time because of the risk of earthquakes. At the same time, accidents such as the collapse of the Genoa motorway bridge in 2018, which killed 48 people, show how desolate the Italian infrastructure is in some cases. In now the bridge over the Trionto collapsed.
On Monday, a coach crashed on the Amalfi Coast and crashed into a house. The driver did not survive the accident.
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