28 from one town die in bus horror
ALMOST 30 members of one small town were killed in the coach tragedy that claimed dozens of lives in southern Italy on Sunday.
A group of 50 friends and relatives were on board when the bus lost control on a flyover, smashing into a line of cars before falling 30m into a ravine.
Of the 38 confirmed dead, 28 were from the town of Pozzuoli outside Naples, it has emerged. One man told how he had lost four members of his family.
Rescuers heard children screaming as their desperate parents called out to them in the dark amid the mass of mangled metal and bodies. Firefighter Emilio Matarazzo said: ‘That was what made my blood run cold. There were people trapped between the seats and the roof of the coach. It was ghastly.’
Another rescue worker was heard calling to colleagues: ‘ Find 40 coffins.’ Relatives last night gathered at a makeshift morgue before the first funerals are held today.
Mario Terracciano, who lost his mother Barbara, her father and his uncle and aunt, all from Pozzuoli, said: ‘I had spoken to my mother only hours before. She had been worried about my lunch.’
The group were returning from a trip to Pietrelcina, birthplace of Padre Pio. Ten people were seriously wounded, including six children. Another 14 occupants of the six cars mown down by the coach suffered minor injuries. Ten-year-old Arianna, pulled out alive, said: ‘I was asleep. I woke up to the shouting and strong smell of burning.’
The bus driver lost control near the town of Monteforte Irpino in Irpinia, about 40 miles from Naples. It was not clear if there was any mechanical problem or any fault on the part of the driver, who also died. Vincenzo D’Aniello, who was in one of the cars, said he ‘ believed the coach lost control of its brakes’. Police have opened an investigation into multiple manslaughter. Pozzuoli’s mayor has declared three days of public mourning.
Meanwhile, a head-on train crash has left 44 people injured, four seriously, in Switzerland. Two regional trains collided about 50km from the capital, Bern.