A total of eight to nine people were on board the bus, which linked the city of Lugo to Vigo. Among them, two were rescued alive and hospitalized: the driver of the vehicle, aged around sixty, and a passenger.
According to the emergency services, at least five passengers died. The first two were found overnight from Saturday to Sunday, a few hours following the accident. The other three were located late Sunday morning near the wreckage of the coach, according to a Civil Guard spokesman.
According to the authorities, one to two people are still missing. “The figure is not yet known precisely” because the driver “has a doubt” regarding the number of people who were in the bus during the accident, said the Civil Guard.
According to local authorities, the five deceased are a young woman of Peruvian nationality residing in Galicia, where she worked in the service of an elderly person, and four Spaniards living in the region.
One of the two new victims is a woman. The other is a man whose lifeless body has been located but has not been recovered at this stage.
Appalling weather conditions
The accident took place in a place with “a fairly large drop”, and therefore difficult to access, explains a spokesman for the Civil Guard of Pontevedra. The emergency services published on social networks an impressive aerial photo of the bus, plunged into a tumultuous stream.
It was a motorist who first gave the alert following noticing that the safety rail was destroyed on the bridge where the accident took place. The emergency services then received a call from the bus, which made it possible to locate the wreckage.
The rescue operations were complicated by the heavy rains that fell during the night, which suddenly raised the level of the Lerez river, where the bus fell, but also by the relief of the area. There is under the bridge “a fairly significant drop”, of the order of “thirty meters”, assured the spokesperson for the Civil Guard. In a press release, the emergency services spoke of a drop reaching “75 meters”.
These conditions forced the rescuers to suspend the search for several hours during the night. The latter finally resumed at dawn with significant resources, including mountain rescue units, cavers and a helicopter.
