Fears have risen about the condition of infrastructure across Europe after the deadly collapse of a stretch of a motorway bridge in Genoa, with experts warning that some road bridges are in a dangerous state. In France, the transport minister warned that the country’s road network was in a “critical state” after a recent studied carried out by the French government found a third of its road bridges required repairs and that 841 posed a potential risk.

In Italy, as many as 300 bridge are at risk of failure, including a bridge near Agrigento, Sicily, designed by Ricardo Morandi, the same engineer behind the Genovese bridge. The Sicilian authorities closed the structure because of structural damage in its pillars.

Genoa’s chief prosecutor said on Thursday that there could be as many as 20 people missing in the rubble from the collapsed bridge, in addition to the 39 already confirmed dead.(theguardian)…[+]