Belgium coach crash in Switzerland tunnel kills 28

[dipsydoodle]

Source: BBC News

At least 28 people - including 22 children - have been killed in a coach crash in a tunnel in Switzerland.

Another 24 children were injured in the crash near Sierre, in the canton of Valais, close to the border with Italy.

The coach, carrying 52 people back to Belgium, hit a wall in the tunnel head-on late on Tuesday. Both of the coach's drivers were among those killed.

The children, from the Belgian towns of Lommel and Heverlee, were returning home after a skiing holiday.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17362643

[trusty elf]

1. Oh, god, how horrible!

[ejbr]

2. The profound pain in the world...

the profound pain.

[jakeXT]

3. I wonder how many could've been saved with seat belts?

A couple of discussions and nothing will change.

It's not like Belgium is that broke.

Indiana says it can't afford to add seat belts to buses


Indiana officials said Tuesday that they would love to require safety belts on every school bus, but they just can't afford it.
http://www.ibj.com/indiana-can-t-afford-to-add-seat-belts-to-buses/PARAMS/article/33202

[dipsydoodle]

4. The coach was fitted with seat belts

.

[BelgianMadCow]

15. and the children were wearing them

so JakeXT has his answer.

Swiss rescuers, trained for avalanches etc, could not hold back their tears. The bus was sitting there with all 6 adults and half the children dead. The others couldn't speak out of shock and were silent or crying.

[dipsydoodle]

16. I got it on the radio early

and posted later. Part of the tragedy is that I guess some of the children who survived may possibly have lost all of their close friends and some parents their only children.

I can't say much else : too upsetting even this late in the day.

[Cybu]

5. Bus crashed into a wall

Half of the bus is gone. I don't think seatbelts would have helped much here ...
I feel sorry for the kids and their families

[DFW]

6. I heard this in Brussels this morning

I was on my way down to Paris, missed my train, and so parked myself in a café in Brussel-Zuid for a hour.
The TV news was reporting about this nonstop. It sounded really gruesome.

[dipsydoodle]

7. Belgium government has flown all affected families to Switzerland

in military transporters. There are current problems with identifying the children all of whom were between 11 and 13 years old.

A very very sad day. Belgium has declared a day of national morning.

[DFW]

8. At lease they are reacting.

European kids go on expeditions like this all the time. When my kids were that age, they went on school bus
trips all the time--down to the Czech republic, France, wherever. Bus drivers sometimes have long routes and
too little sleep. We always breathed a sigh of relief when our girls got back home. This kind of thing doesn't
happen too frequently, but if it's your kid that suddenly will never come back, that's no consolation, and you're
a wreck for the rest of your life.

I'm only down here in Paris for another two hours, and then have to get back up to Brussels this evening.
I'll check out the TV news when I get there. It won't be pleasant, I know.

[Beacool]

10. You were in Brussels?

One of my brothers lives in Belgium. He's an economist for the EEC. Although he actually lives in Liege (he prefers the suburbs). I'm about to send him an email asking him if they have any more news. What a horrible tragedy for the families of these children and the other people who died.

[DFW]

13. I'm in Brussels once a week for work. Liège is out there!

Even if you grab a Thalys or an ICE train, it's around 40 minutes from Brussels-North, otherwise
you have to count an hour on the normal Belgian trains. It's closer to Germany than it is to Brussels.
Nice countryside around Liège, although the city never really did anything for me.

Speaking of Sprout City, I gotta haul ass, or I'll be stuck here in Paris for the night!

[Beacool]

17. The Sprout City - LOL!!!

I never thought of calling it that. Yeah, Liege is about an hour from Brussels, but my brother's girlfriend is from there and he likes the area. They are in the outskirts of the city, he doesn't like to live in any city. He prefers the countryside.

I hope that you had a good trip home.

[DFW]

18. We've been calling it that for 30 years.

As for home--miles to go before I sleep. I'm back in Belgium for the night, have a friend's birthday dinner
tomorrow back "home," which on this side of the pond is in the German Rheinland near Düsseldorf. With
any luck, I'll be back there by 7 PM tomorrow.

This evening, TV5, a French language news station was broadcasting about the bus tragedy. Either there
was a mechanical failure, or the driver had a medical issue, or got distracted. It was only about 25 minutes
after departure, so he probably didn't fall asleep, and there was no traffic in the tunnel. They were interviewing
parents and relatives of the children. I speak both French and Flemish, so it was pretty hard to listen to.

[Beacool]

19. It must be a parent's worst nightmare to lose a child.

I can't even image their pain, it's all very tragic. I wonder if they'll ever figure out what caused the accident.

Oh, you live in Germany. I somehow thought that you lived in Belgium. Europe is so small that you're never too far from a neighboring country.

Well, get some rest and don't fall asleep at your friend's dinner party. You are going to be exhausted after such a hectic schedule. LOL!!!

[DFW]

20. I saw photos of the front part of the bus

It looked like it had been dynamited. It will take a while to piece it all together.

Several of our friends have lost children in their teens that were in our daughter's class. I even played the music at one of their funerals. It was not an easy thing to be part of. Since they were both only children, the parents' lives were devastated. They remain good friends of ours. My wife lost her younger brother to brain cancer recently. Her mom has had cancer twice and survived it. My wife has had it once. We find out Monday if she has it again. Her mom was destroyed at losing her son, and that was with one child surviving, and plenty of time to say goodbye. I can't begin to imagine what it must be like to send a young school age kid off on a field trip only to hear that he or she met a violent end with no chance to take leave.

[dipsydoodle]

22. Most will just remember the last time they said goodbye

with either a kiss on the cheek or a handshake. That's why saying goodbye is important.

Time to say goodbye does make a difference - its not the same as someone going out , expected to return and then not doing so. My wife died back in 1990 when she was 45 after a year or so's notice - brain tumour.

We had the footage on tv here in the UK of the coach being put into storage quite early yesterday. Yes - a horrible mess.

[DFW]

23. Astute observation.

A good friend of ours died of cancer at age 36. This was 20 years ago. But she knew she wasn't going
to make it, and invited her closest friends, one by one, even if they were couples, to come spend some
time with her to say goodbye. If you have to go, she went out with class.

[Beacool]

24. I'm so sorry to hear about your wife.

I hope that all is well with her and that she gets a clean bill of health. I'll keep her in my prayers. I also feel for your MIL and your friends. Regardless of the age, we are all our mom and dad's babies.

So much sadness.......

[DFW]

25. Thanks for that

When the biopsy and the results of the operation are in Monday afternoon, I hope to breathe a lot easier.

We've had enough of this stuff for one decade.

[Beacool]

26. Well, here's keeping my fingers crossed.

[Beacool]

9. How terrible, all those poor children!!!

It sounds to me that the driver may have fallen asleep or had some kind of health issue (a heart attack, stroke, seizure, etc.).

May they all rest in peace.

[bikebloke]

11. The crash occured in a long straight stretch.

The Swiss said they've never have accidents of any kind along that part of the tunnel.

Either the driver dozed or there was a catastrophic failure of the steering mechanism. But the reason for two drivers is so one could sleep.

I once rode a marathon coach from Athens up into Europe. One driver was sleeping, the other drove. The driver decided he wanted to sleep too. So he pulled over on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere (in Yugoslavia) and slept too. Eventually, one of the other passengers woke the spare driver. I guess we were lucky for the inconvenience rather than a crash.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. Falling asleep seems unlikely in this case

The article says they had arrived the night before, and rested through the day before beginning the journey - and this is only a few miles from the start.

But we may never know - both drivers were killed.

[Marrah_G]

12. This is so sad

I hate seeing the loss of so many young lives.

[midnight]

21. It was the most serious traffic accident in Switzerland's history for decades.

"Two C-130 Hercules military planes are on standby. The Belgian cabinet is due to hold an urgent meeting shortly.
Relatives of the victims were later flown to Switzerland, many still unsure about the fate of their children."

"Another 24 children were injured, some critically, in the late night accident near the town of Sierre, in the southern Swiss canton of" Valais.

"Although there have been safety questions over some of the more elderly Alpine tunnels, with just two lanes facing each other, this was not one of those. This was a newer tunnel with a lot of safety features - escape lanes, escape telephones, and it's very wide. There should be enough space for traffic not to hit the kerb."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17376620

[Ron Obvious]

27. The driver

The driver of the coach was apparently fiddling with a DVD or CD it now appears. We'll hear more about this soon, I'm sure.