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SION: Distraught parents flew to Switzerland on Wednesday after a bus carrying a Belgian school group home from a ski trip crashed into the wall of a Swiss tunnel, killing 22 children and six others.
Twenty-four passengers remained in hospital, including three children in Lausanne with critical injuries, but the other survivors were out of danger, Swiss officials said.
Swiss President Evelyn Widmer-Schlumpf and Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo, speaking at a news conference in the town of Sion near the crash site, paid tribute to the victims and the 200 rescue workers who pulled the injured from the wreckage after the bus rammed into a wall inside a tunnel on Tuesday night.
“When a drama like this happens, when we lose a child or have a child suffering in hospital, there are no words. It is important to console the families,” Di Rupo said.
Twenty-one of the dead were Belgian nationals and seven were Dutch, according to Swiss officials. The Dutch Foreign Ministry said three Dutch children in the bus were injured. Most children aboard were aged about 12.
The man in charge of ambulances at the tunnel, Alain Rittiner, described a scene of horror.
“Access to the vehicle, which is quite high, was difficult and it was hard to remove the victims. Emotions ran high, and with so many children, it was an absolute horror,” he told Swiss television.
A police photograph showed the bus had smashed into the side of a tunnel, with the front ripped open, broken glass and debris strewn on the road and rescue workers climbing in through side windows. It was later towed away from the scene.About 200 police, firefighters, doctors and medics worked through the night at the scene, while 12 ambulances and eight helicopters took the injured to hospitals in the holiday region.
Belgium plans to hold a national day of mourning. A memorial mass was set for Thursday in the Swiss town of Sierre. Widmer-Schlumpf, a mother of three, said Switzerland was doing everything to support victims and their families.
Olivier Elsig, prosecutor for Valais canton (state), said that video surveillance images from the tunnel, where the speed limit is 100 kmh (62 mph), showed no other vehicle was involved in the accident and the road was dry and in “good condition”.
“The bus did not appear to be travelling too fast,” Elsig told the news conference. “I immediately ordered an autopsy of the deceased driver, which is under way at this very moment.”
In Washington, a spokesman for the National Security Council said U.S. President Barack Obama “sends his deepest condolences to the victims and their families of last night's bus accident in Switzerland. The loss of so many young lives is especially heartbreaking.”
