The president of the French National Union of Contractors for Repairing and Reinforcing Structures, Christian Tridon, warned Thursday in light of the recent tragic bridge collapse in Italy's Genoa of an "inevitable catastrophe" in France, claiming that the government was underreporting the data and in reality about 14,000 bridges were at risk of collapse in the country.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th August, 2018) The president of the French National Union of Contractors for Repairing and Reinforcing Structures, Christian Tridon, warned Thursday in light of the recent tragic bridge collapse in Italy's Genoa of an "inevitable catastrophe" in France, claiming that the government was underreporting the data and in reality about 14,000 bridges were at risk of collapse in the country.
In July, the French government released a report, assessing the audit of 12,000 bridges in the country, which said that about a third of the bridges were in need of repair, while 7 percent of them (approximately 840) were at risk of collapse.
"France has 200,000 road bridges ... The audit report deals with only 12,000 bridges, which are in the care of the state. The rest are in the care of local authorities ... In general, I agree with the figure of 7 percent, but it should be extrapolated to the total number [of bridges], which means 7 percent of 200,000 road bridges. So instead of 840 we have 14,000 dangerous bridges ... We cannot claim that all of them would collapse tomorrow, but if nothing is done, a catastrophe will be inevitable," Tridon warned in an interview with Sputnik.
Tridon explained that reinforced concrete bridges were the main concern since it was difficult to monitor the state of steel inside the structure, which might be subject to corrosion.
According to the government's July report, if France continues to spend 666 million Euros ($759 million) per year on road infrastructure until 2022, it then will have to allocate an average of 1.3 billion euros per year until 2037 in order to return to the current state of the roads network.
The Morandi Bridge in Genoa collapsed during a storm on Tuesday at about 11 a.m. local time (09:00 GMT). A section of the bridge fell from a height of 100 meters (328 feet) on warehouses, railway tracks and a river, claiming lives of nearly 40 people.
