Legitimate dead and thirty injured in Autobahn bus crash
Police and prosecutors on Monday afternoon confirmed that eighteen people had died and thirty people were injured, two of whom were in life-threatening condition after the crash shortly after 7am.
The bods of fifteen of the eighteen dead had so far been recovered as of about Trio:40pm, reported emergency operations leader Reiner Hoffmann. According to police, the victims who died were inbetween sixty six and eighty one years old
The bus had been carrying forty eight people near Münchberg, Bavaria heading for Nuremberg, when it rammed into the truck in a traffic jam on the A9 motorway, Bild newspaper said. The crash sent the bus up in flames, with television pics showcasing only the charred skeleton of the vehicle remaining.
The accident happened near the petite Bavarian town of Stammbach, in a region dotted with spas and castles that are popular with summer vacationers.
The flames that engulfed the bus “were so strong that only steel parts are still recognizable on the bus, and from that you can understand what it means for the people on this bus,” said German Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt.
Police had earlier confirmed that thirty passengers had been taken to hospitals.
Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced “good dismay” over Monday’s bus crash.
“Our thoughts go to the victims and their family members, as well as to the injured. We hope that those who have been rescued will recover from their injuries,” said her spokesman Steffen Seibert.
Schweres Busunglück auf der #A9. Dabei ist ein #Reisebus vollständig ausgebrannt. Die #Polizei befürchtet mehrere Tote. pic.twitter.com/LYT9vGPo26
Some of those on the bus came from Saxony, according to the state’s interior minister, while Brandenburg’s interior ministry also confirmed that at least four came from their state. Dresden’s mayor Dirk Hilbert said that some of them had gotten on board the bus at Dresden’s central train station.
The accident struck near the town Bayreuth, which draws thousands of classical music paramours every summer to its opera festival.
Around one hundred police officers, more than one hundred fifty rescue workers and five helicopters were deployed to the scene, while south-bound traffic on the motorway remained blocked.
Officials have posted a phone number for relatives of those missing to call for information, as well as for witnesses to call: eight hundred / 7766350.
Bavaria’s interior minister Joachim Herrmann condemned the “totally irresponsible behaviour” of some drivers who he said made it difficult for emergency services to reach the accident site.
Herrmann told reporters on the scene that after any accident, drivers should “immediately form an emergency corridor” for ambulances and fire trucks to pass through, however he still noted that “help arrived as rapid as possible”.
Emergency crews were able to reach the accident site ten minutes after being alerted, but by then the fever of the resulting fire was so superb that no firefighters could treatment the bus.
Herrmann said that this situation where the firefighters could no longer help was enormously difficult for the rescue workers, noting that it had commenced as a minor collision.
Why the fire developed so quickly and had such dramatic consequences must now be examined.
Among the deadliest crashes in latest years was a collision in June 2007, when thirteen people were killed as their tour bus drove off the road and plunged several metres down a slope in eastern Germany’s Saxony-Anhalt state.
In September 1992, twenty one people died when a bus swerved out of its lane and struck a truck before ramming into the road divider in the southern Black Forest region, a key tourist destination.
Across Europe, the last such fatal accident struck on January 21st in Italy, when an accident involving a Hungarian bus carrying teenagers left sixteen dead.
In France, a head-on crash in October two thousand fifteen inbetween a truck and a bus carrying pensioners claimed forty three lives as both vehicles burst into flames.