(Cotobade) Rescuers were hard at work on Sunday in Spain to find survivors after a spectacular bus accident that fell from a bridge into a river on Christmas Eve, in which at least five people were killed.
Authorities said the crash happened shortly before 9:30 p.m. Saturday (3:30 p.m. EST) on a state highway near Cerdedo-Cotobade, a small town in Galicia (northwest Spain) located not far from the border with Portugal.
A total of eight to nine people were on board the bus, which linked the city of Lugo to Vigo. Among them, two were rescued alive and hospitalized: the driver of the vehicle, aged around sixty, and a passenger.
According to the rescue services, which published on Twitter an impressive photo of the wreckage, plunged into a turbulent stream at the bottom of a ravine among tree trunks, at least five passengers died.
PHOTO BRAIS LORENZO, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The bus fell into a river.
The first two were found overnight from Saturday to Sunday, a few hours after the accident. The other three were located late Sunday morning near the wreckage of the coach, according to a Civil Guard spokesman.
According to the authorities, one to two people are still missing. “The figure is not yet known with precision” because the driver “has a doubt” about the number of people who were in the bus during the accident, the Civil Guard told AFP.
According to local authorities, the five dead are a young woman of Peruvian nationality residing in Galicia, where she worked in the service of an elderly person, and four Spaniards living in the region.
Among the passengers on the bus were people who had come to visit relatives detained at the Monterroso penitentiary center in central Galicia on Christmas Eve, the regional daily said. The Voice of Galicia.
heavy rain
According to the authorities, it was a motorist who first sounded the alarm after noting that the safety rail was destroyed on the bridge where the accident took place. The emergency services then received a call from the bus, which made it possible to locate the wreckage.
PHOTO BRAIS LORENZO, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Rescuers at the scene of the accident
What happened that night “is a tragedy without words”, the mayor of Cerdedo-Cotobade, Jorge Cubela, told reporters on the spot, praising the “professionalism” of the agents deployed at the scene of the accident.
According to the authorities, the rescue operations were complicated by the heavy rains that fell during the night, which suddenly raised the level of the Lerez river, where the bus fell, but also by the relief of the area.
There is under the bridge “a fairly significant drop”, of the order of “thirty meters”, assured AFP the spokesperson for the Civil Guard. In a press release, the emergency services spoke of a drop reaching “75 meters”.
These conditions forced the rescuers to suspend the search for several hours during the night. The latter finally resumed at dawn with significant resources, including mountain rescue units, cavers and a helicopter.
According to the authorities, the causes of the accident are not yet known, although bad weather may have played a role. According to the spokesperson for the Civil Guard, the driver of the bus tested negative for alcohol but also for narcotics.
“We don’t yet know the causes [de l’accident] with certainty” but “it is true that the weather conditions were very bad last night”, confirmed on the spot the president of the region of Galicia, Alfonso Rueda.
On Twitter, the leader of the Popular Party (PP, right) Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, originally from Galicia, which he led for 13 years, sent his “condolences to the families of the victims” and thanked those taking part in the “research of the missing”.