The driver of a bus that crashed near Venice, Italy, killing 21 people may have suffered some kind of medical emergency before he plunged off an overpass, plunging the vehicle more than 30 feet, officials said as the dead man’s nationality was revealed today.
Authorities have launched an investigation into the fiery crash after learning 40-year-old driver Alberto Rizzotto, who was among the dead, was just hours into his shift when the tragedy struck just before 8pm on the well-travelled, straight road. in the district of Mestre.
Video of the crash shows that no other vehicles contacted the bus carrying foreign tourists to the campsite before it crashed into an area near the railway tracks and burst into flames.
Prosecutors said the shuttle bus scraped a guardrail for more than 150 feet before it hit and went off the overpass, landing upside down on the ground below.
The city-owned buses are only a year old and Rizotto has worked for the bus company for seven years and has a perfect driving record, according to officials.
The bus was traveling on a straight, well-traveled road and no other vehicles contacted it before it crashed.Vigili del Fuoco HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock Officials believe the bus driver, who died in the crash, may have suffered a medical emergency. ZUMAPRESS.com
Mayor Luigi Brugnaro called the accident “inexplicable” while other officials believed a medical episode may have been the cause.
“We think the driver may have fallen ill,” Veneto Region President Luca Zaia told Rtl 102.5 radio.
Investigators hope to recover video from cameras inside the bus to reveal what happened inside before the fatal crash.
Officials are also looking into whether the battery of the electric bus may have contributed to the fire that ignited the debris. However, the cause of the crash, Brugnaro warned, “has nothing to do with the fact that it’s electrical.”
21 dead including an Italian driver, nine Ukrainians, four Romanians, three Germans, two Portuguese, one Croat and one South African.AP
The driver was the only Italian killed in the crash, officials said today. The remaining dead included nine Ukrainians, four Romanians, three Germans, two Portuguese, one Croat and one South African.
Another 15 people were injured, with most of their wounds being broken and burned. Four Ukrainians – including a 3-year-old girl with severe burns – as well as travelers from Spain, Austria, France, Croatia and Germany were injured.
Nine victims remained in the intensive care unit Wednesday.
The tourists had spent the day strolling along Venice’s famous canals and were heading back to the Hu Venezia Campground in Pekan via a 15-minute bus ride when disaster struck.
Brugnaro previously called the scene “apocalyptic.”
“I will never forget what I saw in my entire life,” he told The Associated Press from his office in Mestre. “Seeing all those people crammed into the bus, down there, is something you can’t describe.”
Some of the first people on the scene were good Samaritans who lived near the crash site and heard the explosion followed by screams.
Housemates and longtime Italian residents Godstime Erheneden, 30, from Nigeria, and Boubacar Touré, 27, from Gambia, were making dinner in an apartment overlooking a busy overpass when they saw the wreckage below.
Nine of the 15 injured are still in intensive care, where they are being treated for severe burns and broken bones. AP
Erheneden rushed to board the bus — past the driver he said was dead — and carried a woman and a man on his shoulders, he told the Venice daily Il Gazzettino.
“The woman screamed, ‘My son, my son,’ and I went back in. I see this girl who must be 2 years old,” he said while reminding his own son who is the same age. “It was very bad. I don’t know if he survived. I thought he was alive but when the rescuers arrived, they immediately took him away.”
The man tried to put out the fire with a fire extinguisher but the fire was too strong, they said.
The mayor praised the couple.
“They threw themselves into the fire to save these people. They are the real heroes of our time,” said Brugnaro.
With Postal wire
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
