18 dead as passenger bus collides with truck in Moscow

More than a dozen people were killed, including a child, and over 60 injured as a truck crashed into the side of a passenger bus in Moscow, tearing the back half off.

Russia’s Emergencies Ministry has confirmed the deaths of 18 people, with the youngest victim being a six-year old girl. Initially Moscow medical authorities reported 14 deaths, but later four of the injured died in hospitals.

At least 25 others have been taken to hospital with nearly a dozen of them in a critical condition. Two of those hospitalized include children between eight and 10 years old.

A truck carrying roadbase crushed into bus N1033, which was carrying 60 people.

Earlier reports said there were 41 passengers on board, but later the number was corrected and confirmed by Moscow's acting deputy mayor, Pyotr Birukov.

By 5:15pm local time (13:15 GMT) some of the bodies have been recovered from the mangled bus.

At least five of them have been identified, including the little girl and her 38-year-old mother. The main difficulty for rescuers is that some of the victims appeared to be buried under layers of roadbase, which spilled from the truck.

Dashcam video of the crash shows that the truck driver deliberately overtook front cars that were waiting at the intersection with the main road. He left two cars behind him, and kept moving, hitting the bus at speed. One witness told RIA Novosti that the driver was moving on the wrong side of the road.

"The KAMAZ [truck] was moving at high speed on a separate lane on his road while at the time the bus was just leaving the stop where it took on passengers. The KAMAZ could have avoided the collision, but tried to pass the bus, hit it and almost cut its back off,” one witness told RIA Novosti.

The truck driver was thrown out of the vehicle and is seen looking at the accident in shock.

Thirty ambulance crews were dispatched to the site in southern Moscow.

Helicopters with medics on board also attended the crash scene. Four helicopters were used to transport the injured.

The driver has survived the collision and was identified as a 46-year-old Armenian citizen, who was fined seven times this year alone for traffic violations, Moscow police stated. The driver is currently in a hospital being questioned by police.

The accident happened in an area referred to as “new” Moscow, as the southern suburb was recently included within the city’s borders.

Monday has been declared day of mourning in Moscow.

Saturday 13 July 2013

http://rt.com/news/bus-children-dead-moscow-050/

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Disaster-prone salt range: Ten perish in motorway bus crash

Another deadly bus accident in the salt range near Kallar Kahar occurred on Friday, when a passenger bus overturned on the motorway, killing at least ten and injuring fifteen others.

The Faisalabad-bound bus left Rawalpindi with 50 passengers onboard. While going down a steep slope, the brakes failed and the bus hit the median and jumped the divider, flipped over and slid onto the northbound section of the highway, pinning many passengers under its weight.

The police said that six people including the driver, a woman and a child, died on the spot, while six were critically injured and were rescued by cutting through the vehicle’s frame.

The motorway authorities’ initial inquiry attributed the accident to driver error leading to brake failure.

“He lost control over the bus after he put it in neutral on entering the salt range. When he applied the brakes, they failed to respond,” said a National Highways and Motorway Police (NHMP) officer.

Most of the passengers belonged to Faisalabad and Jhang districts. NHMP emergency vehicles were the first to arrive at the scene. However, witnesses said that even before their arrival, passersby started shifting the injured to the nearby Chakwal District Headquarters Hospital in their private vehicles.

The police said at least two bodies were unidentifiable and that four of the critically wounded were later shifted to Rawalpindi District Headquarters Hospital. At least one of the sixteen who were shifted to Chakwal Hospital died in hospital.

Police said the accident occurred near the entrance to the salt range and not the narrow turn referred to as “229” by the police. The 229 bend is a few metres ahead of the salt range entrance and has seen more than 200 accidents occur there, including a number of deadly ones.

The deadliest accident occurred two years ago, when a Faisalabad-bound bus overloaded with students overturned in similar fashion, killing more than thirty students and injuring several others. The Supreme Court also took note of the accident.

“The fitness certificate of this bus was valid for another year, so there was nothing mechanically wrong with the vehicle,” NHMP officials told The Express Tribune.

The police have taken multiple preventive measures in the salt range, including the placement of speed-breakers on narrow turns, to control the rising number of accidents in the area, but these measures have failed to serve as a significantly effective deterrent.

NHMP officials also record videos on all passenger busses when they enter the motorway in order to keep tabs on overloading. The police identified six of the bodies in Chakwal District Headquarters Hospital as Mahnoor Shakeel from Sumandri, Faisalabad, Umar Ali Shah of Malhu Mor, Jhang, Iqra Shafqat, Naeem Hayat and Shahbaz Shaaban, all from Cheecha Watani, Sahiwal and the driver Muhammad Iqbal.

At least two of the bodies in Chakwal could not be identified due to the severity of their injuries.

Saturday 13 July 2013

http://tribune.com.pk/story/576316/disaster-prone-salt-range-ten-perish-in-motorway-bus-crash/

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Death toll in Canada rail crash up to 28

THE death toll from the Lac-Megantic train disaster has risen to 28 after four more bodies were pulled from rubble of the devastated Canadian town.

A further 22 people remain missing and presumed dead after the rail disaster, Quebec police said on Friday, as accident investigators continue to comb through the destruction.

A spokesman from the coroner's office added they have now identified eight of the 28 bodies, up from just one earlier.

Part of a train made up of 72 tank cars loaded with crude oil derailed in the early hours of Saturday, July 6, in Lac-Megantic, near the Quebec-Maine border, igniting a huge explosion that laid waste to the centre of the lakeside town.

Police working in the disaster zone have had "a great deal of difficulty" because of strong petrol fumes, Quebec provincial police spokesman Michel Forget said.

"These are the places where there is a much denser concentration of oil. So, when we lift pieces, these fumes" reach insupportable limits for the investigators, he said.

"We have had therefore to review our strategy and deploy to other spots," Forget explained, emphasising that "the ground is contaminated with oil in some places."

Police are examining "different measures to ensure ventilation to make sure the work can continue" as efficiently as possible.

The approximately 200 police on the scene, including 60 investigators, will be reinforced in the coming days by crime scene technicians from Montreal and Quebec City "in order to accelerate the work," he added.

Earlier, investigation official Jean Laporte said the Lac-Megantic crash was "extremely likely the most devastating rail accident in the history of Canada."

The US transportation safety agency would also work with the investigators, Laporte added.

Saturday 13 July 2013

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/death-toll-in-canada-rail-crash-up-to-28/story-fni0xqll-1226678831618

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France train crash: Looters 'picking through the wreckage' of intercity express

A faulty rail joint is being blamed for yesterday's French train crash that left six people dead and 30 injured.

As rescue workers continued to search the wreckage of the intercity express for survivors, rail officials pinpointed a loose connector as the most likely cause of the crash.

It came as police reported looters trying to steal from the bodies of victims who were electrocuted or crushed to death.

The packed train came off the rails and hit a platform, overturning carriages, as it travelled through Bretigny-sur-Orge station in central France.

Officials said it was impossible to know if there were more people trapped until the overturned carriages were lifted.

“The fear is that victims may still be trapped in the wreckage,” said a French railways manager at the scene.

A police spokesman described groups of locals “picking through the wreckage” last night.

“It appeared at first they were trying to help, but it soon became clear that they were taking personal property away.

"When police approached they threw stones before running away.”

The crash site, about 16 miles from the centre of Paris, is surrounded by wasteland used as a temporary camp for homeless people.

The six carriage train, which left Paris with 385 passengers on board, crashed about 20 minutes into a scheduled three hour journey to Limoges.

It was travelling at 85mph, below the 93mph speed limit.

Accident investigators were yesterday focussing attention on a switching system which guides trains one track to another.

They found one joint in the switch had disconnected from its normal position.

The steel plate connector had worked its way loose and become detached at points about 200 yards from the station, causing the train to derail.

The investigation is expected to focus on how the piece of metal had become detached.

Checks on 50,000 similar components across the French rail network will be now be carried out.

Pierre Izard, an official with the national rial company SNCF, told a press conference: “It moved into the centre of the switch and in this position it prevented the normal passege of the train’s wheels and it may have caused the derailment.”

He said investigators were looking into how this happened when another train had travelled over the same spot only 30 minutes before.

In addition, they were trying to work out why the third carriage was the first to derail.

Transport Minister Frederic Cuvillier yesterday ruled out human error for the disaster.

He said: “Fortunately, the driver of the locomotive had absolutely extraordinary reflexes in that he sounded the alarm immediately, preventing a collision with another train coming in the opposite direction and which would have hit the derailing carriages within seconds. So it is not a human problem.”

Passengers and officials in train stations across France today held a minute’s silence at noon to commemorate those who died.

The accident happened on one of the busiest weekends with the country celebrating Bastille Day tomorrow.

British student Marvin Khareem Wone was among those on another train when the train ploughed into the station.

He said: “The train went off the railway - it just went on the platform and kind of flew in the air for a second and went upside down.

“The first and the second coach were completely destroyed. I really thought no-one could survive that because it was completely mashed up.

“Everyone was crying and running everywhere. A woman was crying for her daughter who was still on the train."

Saturday 13 July 2013

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/france-train-crash-looters-picking-2050956

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