GENOA, Italy (AP) - Italian prosecutors focused their investigation into the Genoa highway bridge collapse on possible design flaws or inadequate maintenance, as the death toll rose Wednesday to 39 people and Italian politicians looked for someone to blame.
Fears mounted that another part of the Morandi Bridge, which was carved in two by the collapse of its midsection during a violent storm Tuesday, could also come crashing down. That prompted authorities on Wednesday to widen an evacuation zone around the bridge, forcing some 630 people out of apartments in nearby buildings.
Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Danilo Toninelli raised the possibility the evacuees may never again live there, saying the need to rebuild a new bridge on the city's key artery could require the destruction of nearby residential buildings.
On Tuesday, just as many Italians were driving to vacation destinations on the eve of Italy's biggest summer holiday, a huge stretch of the 51-year-old bridge collapsed, sending more than 30 cars and three trucks plunging up to 150 feet to the ground. The section that collapsed was 260 feet long.
Still dazed or shaken, survivors Wednesday recounted their brushes with death.
One truck driver provided a dramatic account, including a description of how an emblematic green truck seen in photos worldwide stopped just short off the abyss and of police heroism as the bridge crumbled.
The truck driver identified only as Idris said the green truck was saved thanks to a car that passed it, forcing its driver to brake slightly. The car plunged off into the chasm.
"That truck driver is the luckiest in the world," Idris told Sky TG24. "He should have fallen in but, there is a car that passed him he braked right where the bridge was broken."
Idris credited police for arriving quickly and moving 150-200 people who were on the bridge to safety in a tunnel - then adding a real risk by returning to the bridge with car keys to bring some of the vehicles to safety.
As this crippled Mediterranean port city of 600,000 reeled from the tragedy, about 1,000 rescue workers kept up the search for victims, picking through tons of broken concrete slabs, smashed vehicles and twisted steel. At least two bodies more were pulled out.
The tons of debris that rained down from the bridge landed in a dry stream bed, along a railroad track or crashed down perilously close to apartment buildings. At one point, Sky TG24 said, residents were temporarily blocked from even returning to their homes briefly to grab essential documents, medicine or other necessities.
After the search for bodies ends, tons of debris needs to be cleared away as soon as possible. Genoa is a flood-prone city, and authorities warned all the concrete in the dry riverbed could become a dam within hours if heavy rains arrived.
Civil protection chief Angelo Borrelli confirmed Wednesday 39 people had died and 15 were injured. Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said three children were among the dead. Four French citizens traveling to a music festival and two Albanians were also reported killed.
Genoa Prosecutor Francesco Cozzi told reporters the investigation into the collapse was focused on human causes, specifically the possibility of inadequate maintenance or a design flaw in the bridge's construction.
"I don't know if there is responsibility. For sure it was not an accident," he said.
Asked if authorities had been given any warning the bridge - a key link between two major highways, one headed toward France and the other to Milan - could be dangerous, Cozzi indicated no serious safety concerns had reached his office before the collapse.
Otherwise "none of us would have driven over that highway 20 times a month, as we do," Cozzi said.
A $22.7 million project to upgrade the bridge's safety had already been approved, with public bids to be submitted by September. According to the business daily Il Sole, the improvement work involved two weight-bearing columns that support the bridge - including one that collapsed Tuesday.
The 1967 bridge, considered innovative in its time for its use of concrete around its cables, was long due for an upgrade, especially since the structure was more heavily trafficked than its designers had envisioned.
One construction expert, Antonio Brencich at the University of Genoa, had previously called the bridge "a failure of engineering."
Other engineers, noting the bridge was 51 years old, said corrosion and decades of wear-and-tear from weather could have been factors in its collapse.