Limo crash a ‘wake-up call’
| Reuters set up for classes. At the Negeri 15 Palu middle school, fewer than 50 of its 697 students showed up.
School principal Abdul Rashid said he knew of four pupils who were killed in the quake.
“Classes haven’t started. We’re only collecting data to find out how many students are safe,” he said, adding that the education ministry would decide when schools open.
One boy chatting said he was sad so few of his class mates had shown up.
Most of the dead from the quake and tsunami were in Palu.
Figures for more remote areas are trickling in but they seem to have suffered fewer deaths than the city. | Reuters A CRASH that killed 20 people in upstate New York is a “wake-up call” for limousine safety, the chief of the federal agency investigating what happened to a stretch limo taking passengers to a surprise birthday party said yesterday.
Saturday’s accident, in which two pairs of newly-weds, four sisters from one family and two brothers from another were killed, was the deadliest US transport crash in nearly a decade.
“Here we have 20 lives that have been lost tragically. We do need to learn from this,” Robert Sumwalt, chairperson of the National Transportation Safety Board, told CNN.
Investigators were determining whether the regulations for limousines, whose passengers are not required to wear seat belts, are adequate. Investigators also plan to investigate if the design of the roadway was a factor in the crash.
The limo charged through a highway intersection without stopping. It crashed into an unoccupied parked car and hit two pedestrians before coming to a rest in a shallow ravine, officials said. The limo driver, all 17 passengers and the two pedestrians died. | Reuters