Another Dreadful Disaster.

[mrdee 1]

A bus crash in Switzerland has killed 28 Belgian and Dutch tourists, 22 of them children, as they returned from a ski trip.

 

The vehicle smashed into a concrete wall of a tunnel in the Swiss Alps, near the border with Italy.

Another 24 children were injured in the crash - which has been described as one of the worst traffic accidents in Swiss history.

Six adults, including the two drivers of the coach, died in the accident.

The bus, which was carrying 52 people, crashed on Tuesday night in the canton of Valais, an area of popular ski resorts.

It was travelling on the A9 towards Sion when it suddenly swerved to the right, struck a kerb and hit the motorway tunnel.

Parties from two schools in Belgium were on board the bus, heading from Val d'Anniviers back to Belgium.

Most of the children were aged around 12, and the bus was one of three hired by a Christian group which organised the trip.

Familes of the victims are being flown to Switzerland by military aircraft.

An investigation to determine the cause of the crash is under way.

No other vehicles were said to be involved in the incident.

Belgium's Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo, on his way to the crash scene, said this is "an extremely sad day for all of Belgium".

A statement from his office said: "The prime minister learned with dismay of the horrible accident that happened in Switzerland.

"This is a tragic day for all of Belgium."

"His first thoughts go to the victims, to the members of their family and their loved ones."

Swiss parliamentarians stood for a minute's silence, as did the MPs in Parliament in Belgium.

President Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, who will also be visiting the site, said the country would do all it could to support the families of the dead and injured.

Jan Luykx, the Belgian ambassador to Switzerland, who went straight to the site of the crash, said: "This tragedy will hit the whole of Belgium."

The impact of the smash was so severe many passengers were trapped in the wreckage and had to be freed by rescuers.

Around 200 police, firefighters and medics worked through the night on board the bus, its front ripped open and broken glass and debris strewn across the road.

Christian Varone, the head of police in the Canton of Valais region, described it as "a scene like a war".

He said: "We have had a number of serious accidents in Valais but nothing like this, with so many young victims."

Eight helicopters and a dozen ambulances ferried survivors to hospitals in the Valais region, as well as to Bern and Lausanne.

Jean-Pierre Deslarzes, a surgeon in one of the hospitals, said: "All the rescuers were shocked by what they have experienced.

"The magnitude of the accident is difficult to digest."

The coach was heading back to the cities of Lommel, close to the Dutch border, and Heverlee in Flanders.

Distraught parents and relatives rushed to Saint Lambertus School in Heverlee and the Stekske School in Lommel for news about their loved ones.

Marc Carels, headteacher of Saint Lambertus School, which had 24 pupils, a teacher and a classroom assistant on the trip, said: "We know some of the children are ok, but we don't have names.

"We asked the parents to come and we are trying to comfort them."

Parish priest and Dean Dirk De Gendt said both the adults were killed.

Of the 24 pupils, "16 suffered different injuries, some broken arms or legs, but they are alive," he said. But the school had "no news" of the remaining eight, he added.

Deputy mayor of Lommel, Kris Verduyckt, said: "The first thing we did was gather the parents here and gave them the information we had.

"A lot of people are calling us asking for more information."

Peter Vanvelthoven, the mayor of Lommel, joined anxious relatives on a convoy of buses to a military base to be flown to the crash scene.

Students on the fatal trip kept a blog about their "adventurous" holiday.

"Today was totally the best," a pupil from one school wrote.

"The adventurous walk was tiring but mega-cool. We won first prize for cleanest room. Tomorrow it's going to be colder. Byyyeeee!"

One teacher posted a note to reassure parents that they were being missed.

"For now we do not see much homesickness," the teacher wrote. "But from the reactions of the children we gather that they miss you a little bit."

Belgian Transport Minister Melchior Wathelet said: "I'm at a loss for words. Terribly hurt, terribly moved."

Mr Wathelet said the company that ran the coach, Toptours, based in Aarschot, central Belgium, had a good safety record.

"The drivers had arrived the night before and had rested during the day before departure. It seems that the law on driving and rest periods has been respected," Mr Wathelet added.

Switzerland's mountain regions have a history of deadly crashes.

Tuesday's was the worst since 1982 when 39 German tourists were killed on a railway crossing when a train hit their bus.At the moment, the number of fatalities could still increase, as, when this article was written, a number of children were still in a critical condition, fighting for their lives.

Last month, a British teacher was killed and several others injured in a coach crash in northern France, returning from a school skiing trip in Italy.

It is also possible to sign an online register on the website of the Sint Lambertus school, which can be found here, just click on the link "rouwregister" in the white field on top of the website, and then enter your name, email and message of sympathy.

Sorry, the site is in Dutch only.

^{Sources: Het Laatste Nieuws, Sky News, Het Nieuwsblad, VTM Nieuws.}

Compiled, edited and laid out by Mrdee.

My heart goes out to the victims and their lived ones too.

Edited March 14, 2012 by mrdee (see edit history)

[nanna 0]

R.I.PMy thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families and friends of this tragic coach crash.

[k_nitin_r 8]

There are so many road accidents everyday and a good number of them result in injuries, disability, and even in death. Air travel is much safer in comparison, but the average person does not view air travel the same as he or she views travel by road. Air travel is considered more dangerous simply because the person considering the two options of road trips and air travel thinks that having both feet closer to the ground makes the mode of travel somehow safer. If you give it a second thought, what difference does it make if an accident occurs and a person drops from a height of a few kilometres (I'm not as familiar with the measurement system of feet and miles, but a mile is roughly 1.6 kilometers) or a person is tossed into the prongs of a fork lift? Both are fatal and neither is less dangerous than the other when you consider the chances of survival but when you think about the possibility of occurrence then you are looking at a less likelihood of falling out of a plane or having the plane crash than have a traffic accident.If you give a thought about your road trips, the vehicle within which you travel has probably clocked a few thousand kilometres (again, for the folk who think in terms of feet and miles, a mile is roughly equal to 1.6 kilometers) and assuming that you do take it to the service center at regular intervals, you have a good batch of engine oil and the fuel filters and air filters let the car's engine run without any hiccups, barring the use of low quality fuel or any other unforeseen technical problems. Even if you have the best possible service center with the most qualified mechanics, there are bound to be problems that they cannot detect. They cannot predict when a tyre would burst but they best they can do is to check if the surface of the tyre is free of any defects and that the wear and tear on the surface of the tyre is at a minimum. They can check if the body of the vehicle 'looks okay' but they cannot tell you anything more about it. Many bodyshops that repair vehicles after accidents do a perfectly good job of covering up any traces of the accident, but you have to remember that the outside can be just an illusion for what is within - some auto workshops do not repair the structural components that make up the rigidity of the vehicle so if the vehicle were to suffer from another vehicular accident, the lack of rigidity would mean a serious safety issue for the driver and the other occupants of the vehicle. Air crafts go through much more stringent quality control checks at regular intervals and there is a ground crew examining the air craft even as they refuel between flights. The body of the aircraft itself is checked for metal fatigue, which is the phenomenon by which metal objects develop tiny cracks that are invisible to the eye and may not even be at the surface because of the pressure changes and the compression and decompression cycles that an aircraft goes through each time it takes off or lands. Similar problems can occur in automobiles too in parts that undergo heavy stress but who even performs such a check for automobiles? All that most folk do is check if the body has any rust showing, which can be easily covered up with some welding and paint, and that's about all that a structural check involves.When you travel by road, you have the problem of dealing with debris and objects that are on the road whereas that problem is diminished greatly when you travel by air. There are cases where birds flew through the jet engines of air planes and the flight had to perform an emergency landing with the remaining engines (I'm assuming that all jet liners have at least two engines, but I could be wrong in making that assumption) but that is very very uncommon. There are strict regulations for flying planes and pilots have to undergo training to make sure they can fly a plane, unlike the case with automobile drivers - the institutions that test for the ability of a person to driver a motor vehicle (DMV or the equivalent) tests the driver either under controlled conditions or under average conditions where the driver has to drive for a short period of time to exhibit the basic skills needed to drive a vehicle. However, the drivers are faced with challenges and not-so-average situations almost all the time. Drivers may have to drive for extended periods of time, in traffic-jams, and in different kinds of weather and driving tests usually do not check a driver's ability to deal with any of the three (perhaps traffic-jams are covered, but what about the specific instance of driving behind a vehicle carrying construction equipment or driving beside a vehicle carrying heavy loads?). If the aviation licensing industry was as liberal as the automotive licensing industry in handing out licenses to fly, then we would have a lot more accidents than we have today. We would have tired and sleepy pilots being overworked by their airlines and you most definitely would not want to be riding in a commercial jet liner piloted by one of those folks. Truck drivers and bus drivers often run on a lack of sleep and you just might look out your side window or rear view mirror to spot one of those. Even if you are not being driven by them, they are on the road and if they crashed into you, the crash could prove just as fatal as a whole bus falling over onto its side or falling off a bridge.Some people prefer to travel by road because it is cheaper, or at least because they perceive that it is cheaper. For traveling short distances, having a car or a motorcycle is perhaps cheaper than taking a plane, but for long distances, such as when you need to travel from one city to another, air travel can be just as economical or perhaps even cheaper than traveling by road.

[multfilm 0]

R.I.P.... Switzerland must have some pretty good driving policies if this is the worst crash in Switzerland's history...However, it's still pretty hard for me to imagine how that many people could be killed inside a bus...? I thought buses were pretty safe for travel, even if they do run into something, as long as they don't fall down a river or whatever...