Relatives of victims of a deadly bus crash in Italy began arriving in Venice from other countries Wednesday, looking to comfort injured loved ones or identify their dead.
Twenty-one people including a toddler were killed when the bus carrying tourists broke through a guardrail on an overpass Tuesday evening and plunged to the ground, before bursting into flames.
The bus was carrying tourists from Venice’s historic centre to a camping site.
Survivors at the Angelo di Mestre hospital “are asking for information about their loved ones who were with them,” said head of medicine Chiara Berti.
“There were entire families, grandparents, grandchildren, spouses” on board, she told reporters.
Moreno De Rossi, in charge of the psychological support team for the survivors, said it was “a painful, very difficult moment”, and there were officials on hand to help with translation.
The dead included nine Ukrainians, four Romanians and three Germans, according to the spokesperson for Venice’s mayor.
Two Portugese, one South African and one Croatian also died, as did the Italian driver, he told AFP.
The Croatian victim was a woman who had been honeymooning in Venice, while her newlywed husband was hospitalised, media reports said.
Fifteen people remain in hospital, 13 of whom have been identified as foreign nationals, the Veneto region said.
Ten of the 15 were in intensive care, it said.
– ‘Flipped upside down’ –
Venice authorities have declared three days of mourning after the tragedy, which has sparked debate over the state of Italy’s crumbling infrastructure.
“The bus flipped upside down,” said Mauro Luongo, Venice’s fire brigade commander. “The impact was terrible because it fell from over 10 metres (32 feet).”
Emergency workers spent hours removing bodies from the charred, crushed wreckage, a scene described by Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro as “apocalyptic”.
Boubacar Toure, a 27-year-old from Gambia who had been working at a building site near the accident, told journalists he had been called over by the fire brigade to help with the rescue.
“I pulled three or four people out, including a little girl, and also a dog. The driver was already dead,” Toure said.
Nigerian welder Godstime Erheneden, 30, said he helped a woman who begged him in English to save her daughter.
“I then saw a little girl who must have been two years old. She was unconscious, I fear dead. She is the same age as my son. It’s like I lost him,” he told the Corriere della Sera daily.
Italian media reported that two of the injured were German children — brothers aged seven and 13, whose parents were killed in the crash, and who have been hospitalised with fractures.
– ‘Tragedy foretold’ –
Firefighters said the bus fell from an overpass straddling a railway line and linking the mainland Mestre and Marghera districts of Venice in northern Italy.
Footage from a roadside camera, passed to journalists by local sources, showed it travelling in the far-right lane.
Another bus obscures it from view for a few seconds before it is seen again, toppling slowly off the overpass.
“The main hypothesis at the moment is that the bus driver… may have fallen ill,” said the president of the Veneto region, Luca Zaia.
But Domenico Musicco, head of an association for road accident victims, said it was “a tragedy foretold”.
“The guardrail was designed for a country road, whereas here we needed new-generation equipment that could have prevented the bus from falling,” he told AFP.
“Italian road maintenance is poor. Too little is invested in road safety. It is estimated that 30 percent of accidents are down to that,” he said.
Massimo Fiorese, director of the company that was operating the bus that crashed, told ANSA news agency the bus had only been put into service last year and was in perfect condition.
Iana Morgagni, a 23-year-old student living in Venice, said she had seen the police cars racing to the scene, and realised she had had a narrow escape.
“I was late so I took the bus later than the one that crashed,” she told AFP.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had earlier expressed her “profound condolences”, while several European leaders also sent messages of support.
In July 2018, a bus carrying a group of some 50 holidaymakers back to Naples fell off a viaduct near the city killing 40 people in all.