Six people died and two others were injured on Christmas Eve in a spectacular bus accident, which fell several tens of meters into a flooded river in northwestern Spain.
The accident, which mobilized a vast investigation system throughout the day on Sunday, occurred around 9:30 p.m. on Saturday on a bridge in Cerdedo-Cotobade, a small Galician town located not far from the border with Portugal.
The driver and a passenger hospitalized
According to the authorities, eight people were on board the bus, which linked the cities of Lugo and Vigo, on the Atlantic coast. Among them, two were found alive: the driver of the vehicle, in his sixties, and a passenger, both hospitalized.
The other six passengers were found dead, according to emergency services, which posted on Twitter an impressive photo of the remains, submerged in a turbulent stream at the bottom of a ravine surrounded by tree trunks.
According to the Civil Guard, the first two victims were found near the wreckage of the bus, a few hours after the accident. The bodies of the other four people were recovered from the Lerez River, where the vehicle fell.
The number of missing people has long remained uncertain, as the bus driver expressed “doubts” about the number of people present in his vehicle when it was treated, in shock, by emergency services.
Alert given by a motorist
“The rescue teams confirm that all the missing people have been rescued,” however, the Galician emergency service assured at the end of the afternoon, specifying on Twitter that the search device was going to be lifted.
According to the Civil Guard spokesman, among the victims are five Spaniards from Galicia, including a mother and her son. The sixth is a young woman of Peruvian nationality, who worked for an elderly person in Cerdedo-Cotobade.
According to the local newspaper The voice of GaliciaSome of the deceased passengers were returning from the Monterroso prison, in central Galicia, where they had gone to visit relatives on Christmas Eve.
According to authorities, it was a motorist who first sounded the alarm after noticing that the safety railing was smashed on the bridge where the accident occurred. The emergency services then received a call from the bus, which made it possible to locate the remains.
The rescue operations were complicated by the heavy rains that fell overnight, which caused a sharp rise in the river level, but also by the rugged terrain in the area where the bus fell.
Under the bridge there is “a fairly significant drop”, of the order of “thirty metres”, the spokesman for the Civil Guard described to AFP. The emergency services, for their part, mentioned in a press release a difference in level of up to “75 meters”.
These conditions forced the authorities to suspend the search for several hours. They finally resumed on Sunday morning with mountain rescue units, divers and a helicopter.
The causes of the accident are still unknown
What happened last night “is a tragedy without words,” the mayor of Cerdedo-Cotobade, Jorge Cubela, told reporters, highlighting the “professionalism” of the agents deployed at the scene of the accident.
According to authorities, bad weather may have played a role in the accident, although the exact circumstances are not yet known. According to the Civil Guard spokesman, the bus driver tested negative for alcohol and drugs.
“We still do not know for sure the causes (of the accident)” but “it is true that last night the weather conditions were very bad,” confirmed the president of the Galicia region, Alfonso Rueda, who returned to the scene.
Source: BFM TV
