Google Maps doesn’t show a bridge to Messina. I’m a bit surprised, as the strait is less than two miles and a bridge would definitely facilitate evacuation. They would have to design it to hold up a load of ash though. ;-)
Sicily, Italy is where this is at….
Messina, Brad! Messina! Oh, sorry.
There's been talk for a really long time about such a bridge. The parliamentary gubmint of Italy tends to fall a lot, and there's a big divide, believe it or not, on whether such a project should be undertaken.
If memory serves, Italy has actually tried to sell bonds to finance the project several times, and each time the gov't fell before very many were sold, so the money raised just went into general funds.
The current plan is for a huge-ass suspension bridge.
IMHO some Korean or Japanese (or whomever Norway uses) company that prefabs tunnel sections, sinks them, links them all together, then pumps out the water should be availed of. While the discussion about the bridge goes on, the link could have been completed years ago.
It’s not a shallow straight. There are youtube videos about why a bridge has never been built to span it. After the problems of engineering have been solved, there’s running the gauntlet of graft and corruption in the government and among contractors in Italy—particularly in the south. The last I heard, a plan is in the works to finally build the bridge, but few believe it will ever be finished and it will just be a pit that money is continuously shoveled into.
Tectonic plate boundary runs up that straight…