14 die in college bus crash
Vehicle hurtles downhill as brake fails near Manila
TANAY, PHILIPPINES // Fourteen people, mostly college students on a camping trip, were killed yesterday when the brakes on their chartered bus failed on a downhill road.
Philippine officials said it smashed into an electric post and a tree, also killing the driver and a professor.
About 45 others were injured, many seriously, said Darlito Bati Jr, a disaster- response officer in Tanay town in Rizal province east of Manila.
Mr Bati, who helped to pull the victims from the wreckage, said many of the dead were piled in a heap of bodies at the front of the passenger cabin.
The impact was so strong it ripped off a large chunk of the bus roof and scattered the victims’ belongings, including containers of rice, a stuffed toy, shoes and a neck pillow.
“They were having fun along the way because the camp-out at a resort was to last for three days,” Mr Bati said.
The students, mostly taking computer courses, were less than 30 minutes from their destination when the crash occurred, he said.
Some of the survivors said they smelled burning rubber before the brakes of the bus failed. Some students screamed in panic as the bus went out of control.
Garbage truck driver Danny Gutierrez, who helped the victims into ambulances, said some of the survivors wept, while others suffering from broken legs and cuts were too shocked to speak.
Parents and siblings collected the dead from a funeral parlour, stunned by the tragedy.
The bus was one of several vehicles taking hundreds of university students to a camping resort when the accident happened about 50 kilometres east of Manila.