The city of Venice declared a three-day mourning on Wednesday, in shock the day after the fall of a tourist bus from the top of a bridge, which left 21 dead including two children, a tragedy reigniting the controversy over the The often deplorable state of infrastructure in Italy.
The precise circumstances of the accident are not yet known. Even if the preferred hypothesis is that of driver discomfort, the poor maintenance of the road network in the peninsula is also once again debated, while the country remains traumatized by the collapse of the Genoa road bridge in 2018, which left 43 dead.
In addition to three days of mourning, Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro ordered flags to be flown at half-mast on official buildings. Books of condolences were also made available to people wishing to express their sadness “for the immense tragedy that struck the city”.
The damaged bus, which usually operates regular urban lines, had been rented by a private company to transport around forty foreign tourists. They had just visited the historic center of Serenissima on the lagoon and were returning to their campsite on dry land shortly after 7:30 p.m.
For an as yet undetermined reason, the vehicle crashed into the safety rail of the bridge and fell ten meters, crashing below near a railway line between Mestre and Marghera, two towns forming part of the municipality of Venice. .
Ten meter fall
“The bus turned over. The impact was terrible,” explained Venetian fire chief Mauro Luongo.
Boubacar Touré, a 27-year-old worker from Gambia working on a construction site next to the accident site, told reporters he helped firefighters save passengers. “I extracted three or four people, including a little girl, and also a dog. The driver was already dead,” he testified.
The wreck of the bus, an all-electric Chinese brand E12 Yutong model, was removed at dawn.
The fire chief explained that “among the difficulties encountered was the fact that the bus was electric and therefore had batteries. Unfortunately, they caught fire upon impact.”
But a local fire official interviewed by AFP on Wednesday on condition of anonymity assured that there was nothing to confirm that the presence of burning electric batteries had slowed down the rescue efforts.
Investigators are still seeking to identify victims who did not carry identity documents, in particular by cross-checking with the registers of the campsite where they were staying.
The still provisional toll is 21 dead, including a one-year-old child and a teenager, and 15 injured, including five in serious condition, the prefect of Venice Michele di Bari confirmed at midday during a conference. Press.
Among the identified dead “are 5 Ukrainians, an Italian who is the driver, a German,” he said. “Among the injured, who number 15, there are four Ukrainians, a German, a Frenchman, a Croatian, two Spaniards”, and “four have yet to be identified”.
kyiv, for its part, reported four Ukrainians killed and four injured.
“The injured are all young […] and all foreigners. Their loved ones are gradually arriving at the hospital in their countries of origin,” testified an emergency doctor, Federica Stella, who participated in the rescue.
“Tragedy announced”
The main hypothesis at the moment is that the bus driver, a 40-year-old Italian, was taken ill, according to local authorities.
A video taken from a public monitoring network camera seems to rule out speeding, with the bus driving normally before falling.
For Domenico Musicco, president of the Association of Victims of Road Accidents at Work, the state of the roadway is clearly to blame. “It’s a tragedy foretold,” he told AFP. “This rail is made for a country road whereas here we needed new generation equipment which could have prevented the bus from falling.”
“The maintenance of Italian roads is poor. We invest too little in road safety. The number of accidents due to this is estimated at 30%,” he recalled.
The most serious accident of this kind in Italy to date occurred on July 28, 2013 when a coach carrying around fifty Italian passengers fell from a viaduct near Naples, killing 40 people.