When Boubacar Touré and his roommates heard a loud and sudden boom next to their home, they thought it was an earthquake. Then they opened the kitchen windows, where they were preparing dinner, and one shouted: “a bus fell.”
“We ran to where the bus was burning and I heard a woman shout: ‘my baby, my baby,'” says Boubacar, 27, from Gambia.
“I managed to get her out through the window and then her son, who suffered burns but was still alive.”
The bus was taking tourists back to a campsite after a day in the historic center of Venice.
It was traveling on a busy overpass when it suddenly swerved last Tuesday afternoon, broke through the fences and plummeted several meters until it fell onto a train track where it burst into flames.
At least 21 people died. Of the 15 injured, most remain in intensive care. Among the victims were children, including a baby.
Among the dead are nationals of seven countries, including Ukraine, Germany, Romania and Portugal.
Warning: This story contains descriptions of disturbing scenes
Risk rescue
Boubacar describes how he grabbed the bus’s fire extinguisher to try to put out the flames, but it wasn’t enough.
“The passers-by gave me other fire extinguishers but nothing helped. We had to wait for the firefighters,” he remembers.
“So I kept pulling others out; a woman, a man and a child. People’s heads were bleeding. There was a lot of blood.”
His roommate, Nigerian Odion Eboigbe, was with him, pulling others from the wreckage of the vehicle.
“We were able to save many but unfortunately others died,” says Eboigbe.
“I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t thinking about my own safety because I saw people with their heads open. Today my colleagues asked me what I was thinking when I walked into the flames, but I told them that I felt I had to save the women and children,” keep going.
When emergency services arrived, they spent hours putting out the flames and helping the injured.
The fire was so intense that DNA samples were needed to identify some of the dead.
Who was driving the bus?
At the spot where the bus catastrophically turned, railings are shattered and shards of glass lie on the pavement.
A passerby left yellow flowers.
Authorities say there are no signs of the bus suddenly stopping. Security cameras show how, moments before, the vehicle steadily climbed the overpass and then slowed down and inexplicably swerved against the barriers and fell to the side.
The driver, Alberto Rizzotto, had worked for the bus company for seven years.
The most likely cause, according to authorities, is that he suffered a sudden medical problem that caused him to lose control.
Relatives of the victims began to arrive in Venice from other countries.
On board were “whole families, grandparents, grandchildren, spouses,” said Chiara Berti, from the Angelo di Mestre hospital.
“Tragedy Foretold”
The tragedy raises questions about the state of the flyover’s fences, which were clearly aged and rusted.
Domenico Musicco, head of an association of victims of traffic accidents, described the event as a “tragedy foretold.”
“The maintenance of Italian roads is poor. Very little is invested in road safety. It is estimated that this is the cause of 30% of accidents,” Musicco told the AFP news agency.
Venice declared three days of mourning for this tragedy that has deeply moved the city.
Boubacar and Odion have not slept since the accident. They shrug their shoulders when they are called heroes.
“If saving people makes you a hero, maybe yes,” Boubacar says.
“When someone needs help because they’re dying, you just can’t walk past them.”
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/cw9vnl3e0z7o, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-10-05 12:20:06
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