The San Salvatore hospital in the city of L'Aquila will be "one of the principal points" of an inquiry over construction safety in the wake of the April 6 earthquake, L'Aquila's public prosecutor Alfredo Rossini said on Tuesday.
In order to "verify possible criminal responsibility" for the collapse, Rossini said, he had acquired the results of a 2000 parliamentary report on unfinished hospitals that criticized San Salvatore.
The report pointed out "irrationality and obsolescence" in the construction plans as well as "poor quality of the materials used."
The San Salvatore hospital, which opened in 2000 and should have been quake-proof, had to be evacuated after its walls cracked.
According to local media reports, construction work of the hospital began in 1972, and problems occurred mainly in the older parts of the hospital.
"Our priority will be those large, new buildings that still collapsed," Rossini said, promising "the mother of all inquiries."
L'Aquila Mayor Massimo Cialente, also a hospital doctor, said it was clear that "extremely serious mistakes" had been made during the building of the hospital.
"The hospital would not have collapsed if it had been built as it should have been," he said.
Abruzzo Governor Gianni Chiodi said the region would lodge a civil suit in the event that anyone was found responsible for failing to meet construction safety norms.
(Xinhua News Agency April 15, 2009)
