British people know as keenly as any how powerfully a disaster can both traumatise and redefine a modern nation. The Grenfell Tower fire was at one and the same time a human and social catastrophe, an exposure of construction defects and safety system inadequacies, and a political touchstone whose repercussions will continue to be felt for years. It now seems inevitable that Tuesday’s collapse of the Morandi road bridge in Genoa will become that kind of event for modern Italy.

Nearly three days on, important questions are beginning to be asked about the bridge’s construction, about maintenance checks, and about the corporate and political context in which the bridge and the Italian motorway system have been overseen – or not. In an important parallel with Grenfell, those who warned that something was wrong, and whose warnings were not listened to, have begun to shape the debate. In another parallel, Genoa is already also a party political issue, a test of Italy’s recently formed populist-rightwing coalition government led by Giuseppe Conte.

Yet the primary issue at this still very early stage has to be the human one. When a 200-metre stretch of the Morandi bridge collapsed in a rainstorm on Tuesday, 35 cars and a number of trucks were plunged 45 metres from the A10 motorway to the railway below. The collapse killed at least 39 people, with up to three dozen others either injured or missing. Two families were instantly wiped out. Couples heading home from holiday died. So did truck drivers and a group of French tourists on their way to catch a ferry to Sardinia. Two workers underneath the bridge were crushed as it fell on them. A handful of people on the bridge had astonishing escapes. Saturday, when the first funerals are planned, will be a day of national mourning in Italy. But these heartbreaking scenes affect us all.

Explaining why the Morandi bridge collapsed is a key task. The central question is whether its original design was more to blame than the failure to maintain or close it. The bridge was built in 1967, in a period when Italy’s postwar infrastructure was being transformed. Other projects from that time, also built with concrete, are now in urgent need of replacement. Riccardo Morandi, who designed the bridge, has been accused of wrapping the steel cables that held it up in concrete, thus precluding effective checks and proper maintenance. Two other Morandi bridges have been closed recently in Sicily. But the role of the road operator Autostrade, which is effectively owned by a company in which the Benetton family has a large stake, is also crucial. The plain fact is that Autostrade was in charge when the bridge collapsed and the innocent died.

Italy’s coalition ministers have been quick to play the blame game. Mr Conte wants to punish Autostrade. Deputy prime minister Luigi di Maio of the populist Five Star Movement blames Benetton, and charges the press, in which Benetton is heavily invested, with failing to call Autostrade out. Matteo Salvini, head of the rightwing Lega, blames EU financial policies for starving Italy of funds for infrastructure renewal. All of them are playing the Trumpian distraction game. Embarrassingly for both parties, the Five Star founder Beppe Grillo said in 2013 that warnings that the Morandi bridge could collapse were “a fairytale”. Mr Salvini, meanwhile, has been pictured partying in Sicily on the evening of the bridge collapse like a member of the old elite. The tragedy in Genoa is both a human disaster and a dark parable of modern Italy. The new government came to power by denouncing the system. But now it is in charge of the system too.