Families in Ecuador were yesterday mourning victims of a Christmas Eve road accident, in which a bus plunged into a steep ravine, killing at least 41, including seven children.
Rescue officials said about 30 passengers had survived, but had been injured, some of them badly.
“There’s been a very serious accident with approximately 41 people killed,” National Transport Council (CNT) director Ricardo Anton told reporters.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Earlier reports put the death toll at 35.
Fernando Gandarillas, a spokesman for the Ecuadoran Red Cross, said the bus had fallen into a ravine as it negotiated a descent.
It was traveling on Friday from Quito to the eastern towns of Chone and San Isidro, a trip of more than 250km, he said.
Diego Iniguez, a police chief from a nearby town of El Carmen, told journalists the bus had been filled over capacity and appeared to have experienced a gearbox problem before the driver lost control.
Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa denounced “the irresponsibility of the driver who crashed with more than 70 passengers” on board.
“He picked up passengers along the road, which is prohibited,” Correa told a Christmas meeting with his staff.
“It’s a well-designed highway,” he added.
One survivor told television station Ecuavisa that just before the accident a woman at the front of the bus had started screaming that the driver could not shift gears.
He said the driver appeared to attempt to keep control of the vehicle, but failed and the bus rolled over for about 200m before hitting a tree then dropping into the ravine.
Another survivor, Juan Pablo Alcivar, told Radio Quito how the bus’s gears were heard grinding as the driver tried to downshift.
The police traffic accident -service said it was at the scene of the carnage to try to determine what went wrong.
The injured were taken to several hospitals in the area, while the bodies were piled up inside police vans and delivered to morgues.
The bus belonged to the east Ecuadoran coach company Reina del Camino. CNT director Anton said its operations had been suspended.
“There was a terrible mistake made in this accident,” Anton told reporters.
He was asking police for “the reason the bus was allowed to leave with too many passengers,” he added.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
CONFIDENCE BOOSTER: ’After parkour ... you dare to do a lot of things that you think only young people can do,’ a 67-year-old parkour enthusiast said In a corner of suburban Singapore, Betty Boon vaults a guardrail, crawls underneath a slide, executes forward shoulder rolls and scales a steep slope, finishing the course to applause. “Good job,” the 69-year-old’s coach cheers. This is “geriatric parkour,” where about 20 retirees learned to tackle a series of relatively demanding exercises, building their agility and enjoying a sense of camaraderie. Boon, an upbeat grandmother, said learning parkour has aided her confidence and independence as she ages. “When you’re weak, you will be dependent on someone,” she said after sweating it out with her parkour classmates in suburban Toa Payoh,
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
RSS