In the northwestern Italian port city of Genoa, one of the deadliest disasters in the country, in 2018, put the spotlight on Italy’s ageing infrastructure – and raised questions about whether the tragedy could have been prevented.

On Thursday, judges in Genoa are set to deliver a verdict in the first trial over the collapse of the Morandi road bridge, which killed 43 people when it gave way on August 14, 2018.

Dozens of defendants face numerous charges as families of the victims await a decision they hope will finally bring some measure of justice, nearly eight years after the disaster.

The 1,182-metre (1,293-yard) structure, which had been dubbed Italy’s “Brooklyn Bridge”, was designed by the architect Riccardo Morandi. Inaugurated in 1967, it went through major reinforcement work in the 1990s.

By the turn of the century, experts continued to warn that the structure was deteriorating, yet critical repairs were never carried out.

So what happened on that summer day in 2018, and why did the disaster lead to one of Italy’s largest criminal trials?

What happened to the bridge in 2018?

On August 14 of that year, at about 12pm local time (10:00 GMT), a large, central section of the Morandi bridge gave way to torrential rain, crumbling to pieces and falling some 45 metres (148ft) to the ground.

About 30 cars were on that section of the bridge, with the crossing a key highway between Italy and France and also crucial for nearby port terminals.

Local officials declared a 12-month state of emergency in Genoa and promised 5 million euros ($5.7m) to the rescue efforts.

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What caused the bridge’s collapse?

Shortly after the tragedy, attention turned to two factors in the bridge’s disintegration: Its safety maintenance and its design.

Investigations later uncovered that the collapse was triggered by the rupture of the load-bearing cables inside the stay of the bridge’s ninth pillar, which were eaten away by a highly corrosive atmosphere during its 51-year lifespan.

Prosecutors have also alleged that the collapse was caused by years of missed, inadequate or falsified maintenance aimed at delaying necessary repairs for as long as possible while officials continued to pay dividends to shareholders.

According to Enrico Musso, professor of transport economics at the University of Genoa, the bridge was also bearing a volume of traffic that it was not designed to bear.

Some 50,000 to 60,000 vehicles were crossing the viaduct per day – a result of the city’s population rising in recent decades, Musso told Al Jazeera in 2018.

Defence lawyers, however, have argued that the disaster was a result of an original construction flaw at the top of stay cable number nine – the one that collapsed – which they said was impossible to detect and could not have been prevented by maintenance.

Who were the victims of the bridge collapse?

A total of 43 people died in the disaster. Most were Italian citizens, alongside some French, Albanian and Chilean nationals.

The victims included a family setting off on holiday, young French nationals who travelled to Italy for a techno music festival, and a couple returning from their California honeymoon with their children in tow.

That couple was Claudia Possetti, 47, and her new husband, Andrea, 48, who were passing through the bridge to return to their hometown of Pinerolo with their two children, aged 12 and 16.

Claudia’s sister, Egle Possetti, will be among the relatives present in the courtroom on Thursday to hear the verdict of the collapse.

Even eight years later, Egle remembers her sister as full of life – a woman who was a good person and loved her family deeply, she said. Her nephew was an avid mountain biker, and her niece a “beautiful” dancer.

Egle heads the Comitato Parenti Vittime Ponte Morandi, the committee representing victims’ families, which has been fighting on behalf of their loved ones. Thursday’s verdict has been long awaited, she said.

“We fight so much to the end of this trial to have justice for [Claudia], for her family, for all the [victims], and also for Italian citizens – because we need more justice for all – we need security,” she told Al Jazeera, stating that she hopes all groups responsible for the accident are finally held to account.

Who is on trial for the incident?

Fifty-nine people face a slew of charges, ranging from multiple manslaughter to undermining transport safety and making false statements. They have all denied any wrongdoing.

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Italian prosecutors have been seeking an 18-and-a-half-year prison sentence for a key defendant – the former Atlantia CEO Giovanni Castellucci. The Morandi bridge was operated by Atlantia’s motorway unit, Autostrade per l’Italia.

Prosecutors have also been seeking prison terms ranging from two years and four months to 15 and a half years for the other defendants in the three-year trial, including employees and executives of the company that operated the bridge, the firm responsible for its maintenance, and the country’s Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport.

Castellucci is already in a Rome prison, serving a six-year sentence over another fatal incident in 2013 on a viaduct in southern Italy.

One of Castellucci’s lawyers has said the sentence sought by prosecutors was “unacceptable”.

“It is a frightening sentence, one you would expect to be sought in a murder trial, not in a case where only negligence is alleged,” Guido Alleva said last year.

Autostrade and its then-maintenance subsidiary, SPEA, had the case against them closed in 2022 after a judge approved their financial settlement.

The bridge’s collapse caused a dispute between Atlantia, controlled by the powerful Benetton family, and the government, which ended in 2021 with the sale of Atlantia’s controlling stake in Autostrade.

Prosecutors allege the defendants knew the bridge, which was built in the 1960s, was at risk of collapsing and that hasty decisions were made about maintenance in order to save money.

The bridge’s designer had recommended regular upkeep on the cement span to remove rust, especially due to the corrosive effect of moist, salty air from the nearby Ligurian Sea.

Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini told relatives of victims, residents and authorities at a 2023 commemoration of the incident that the people who plunged to their deaths were not victims of a flood or natural disaster.

Rather, he said, they were “victims of greed, of people who didn’t do their jobs”.

What were the early warning signs?

A 2011 report by Autostrade stated that the bridge was decaying due to high traffic, local media reported at the time of the incident.

In 2016, an Italian structural engineer had warned that the bridge’s design was problematic.

In April 2018, three months before the bridge collapsed, Autostrade had launched a 20,000-euro ($22,840) call for a “structural retrofitting” of the bridge, which would have included work on the collapsed section, according to Il Sole 24 Ore, Italy’s financial newspaper.

And even as early as 2006, newspaper reports cite the government and other local officials considering demolishing and rebuilding the structure – but the project was haughtily contested, mostly by residents of the area.

What happened to the collapsed bridge?

In August 2020, the city inaugurated a new gleaming structure, replacing the destroyed bridge with a more high-tech one, named the San Giorgio Bridge.

The curved underbelly of the new span, designed by famed Italian architect Renzo Piano, evokes the hull of a ship, in tribute to Genoa’s maritime history.

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It also houses four maintenance robots running along its length to spot weathering or erosion, as well as a special dehumidification system to limit corrosion.

Families of the victims had refused to attend the bridge’s inauguration.

“We won’t be at the inauguration; we don’t want the tragedy to be transformed into a carnival,” Egle Possetti told news agencies at the time.

Have there been other bridge collapses in Italy?

The Morandi bridge’s collapse had raised concerns that there could be up to 10,000 bridges and tunnels across Italy at risk, according to Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler, who had covered the 2018 event.

“In the ’60s and ’70s, there was a building boom – there was a lot of corruption. Substandard concrete was being used,” Butler said at the time, adding that it led to questions over the safety of infrastructure across the country.

Numerous bridge collapses have taken place in Italy before and after the incident; however, the Genoa bridge’s fall remains the deadliest by far.