The last messages from class 6A
BELGIUM: Freshly painted pictures fluttered in the sunshine at the gate of Saint Lambert Primary School in the pretty Flemish town of Heverlee.
They were the work of pupils who had just been told that their schoolmates from Class 6A and their two teachers were the victims of the coach disaster in Switzerland.
‘‘Schoolmaster Frank – from Melissa,’’ said the caption beside the image of a red tulip. Frank Kerckhove was the much-loved Class 6A teacher who died in the crash.
Other pictures showed flowers, hospitals and angels and wished ‘‘I hope you get better’’ and ‘‘We are thinking of you, 6A, the best class of all.’’ At the foot of the red brick wall, small bouquets were piling up.
Kerckhove had run a blog during the school trip, including a de- scription of their outward journey to Switzerland. ‘‘The bus trip was very smooth,’’ he wrote. ‘‘There was little traffic. We watched the movie Avatar and no-one became car sick on the climb into the Alps.’’
The children had posted joyous notes about their holiday. ‘‘Today was totally the best,’’ a girl wrote. ‘‘The adventurous walk was tiring but mega-cool. We won first prize for cleanest room. Tomorrow it’s going to be colder. Byyyeeee!’’
A boy wrote: ‘‘Things are super here in Saint-luc. The skiing, the weather, the food. It’s not bad at all. Tomorrow I play in the Muppet Show ... I have seen quite a few dogs. I’m now reading the book Why Dogs Have Wet Noses. Very interesting! I miss you all.’’
The gate of the red brick school in the suburb of Leuven was the scene of anguish in the morning when distraught families turned up, eight of them not knowing whether their children were among the dead. There was confusion for hours as the parents were taken to an air force base for the trip to Switzerland. Sixteen survivors had been accounted for, either injured or unharmed.
‘‘They are sitting there, inside, without knowing,’’ said Dirk De Gendt, the parish priest and a school governor as Heverlee tried to absorb the horror of the overnight tragedy. Parents who know their child is alive are relieved but for the others it’s terrible.’’
Archbishop Andre-joseph Leonard, head of the Belgian Catholic Church, happened to be in Heverlee overnight. He met the parents and said they had ‘‘felt something that resembled the cry of Christ on the cross ‘ My God, why did you abandon me?’’’
Serge, the father of a St Lambert pupil, described the shock which hit the district in the early hours. ‘‘Everyone knows everyone here,’’ he said. ‘‘The emotion is intense for the parents and for the other children, too.’’
Louis Tobback, the Mayor of Leuven, which includes the Heverlee area, stood on the street corner shaking his head. He had spent the early hours trying to email pictures of all the St Lambert children to Switzerland for identification and was complaining about the lack of help from the Belgian Foreign Ministry.
Inexplicably, the local authorities were only told of the crash at 5.30am, eight hours after it happened, said Tobback, who is a former Belgian interior minister.
The disaster defied words, he said. ‘‘It is a shocking, devastating, a scandal when 22 children who are barely 12 die in such an accident. To me it is revolting.’’