"I was maybe thirty meters from the bridge, and I saw the two cars before me stopping. I also stopped my taxi, and I started seeing people running towards me from the bridge into the tunnel," Fiorella explained.

"They were all wet, since it was raining heavily, and many had children in their arms."

"They appeared distraught, and were shouting 'Run away, run away, the bridge has collapsed'... At first, I could not make sense of what they were saying," he said.

Fiorella was lucky: nor him nor any of his relatives were involved in the incident. Yet, his hands started shaking as soon as he recalled the event.

Engineer Arturo Antonelli, a senior officer with Genoa's Firefighter Provincial Headquarters, was among the first emergency crews to reach the site of the incident. His account was less emotional, due to his long experience as emergency worker, yet still dramatic.

"One major difficulty in the immediate aftermath was to reach the site: we struggled to find secondary roads leading to where the bridge had crashed," Antonelli explained to Xinhua.

"It was raining hard at that moment, and that also made things harder," he added.

The "Morandi Bridge" was a 1,182-meter long viaduct linking the western part of Genoa to the east, and a major connection to two highways leading toward Milan and towards the French border respectively.

It did not stand above a residential area, which would explain the still moderate number of victims. Yet, when a portion of about 100 metres of the bridge caved in, at least 30 cars and three heavy trucks were passing through it, local authorities estimated.

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