Six people dead after bus plunges into river

In northwest Spain, a passenger bus crashed off a bridge and into an overflowing river, killing six people and injuring two more, according to rescue services on Sunday.

Firefighters used rope to pull the 63-year-old driver and a female passenger out of the water, and they were both transferred to nearby hospitals with various degrees of injuries.

A police spokesperson told Reuters that the driver's alcohol and drug tests came back negative.

The official stated that as experts worked to figure out how to properly remove the wreckage from the river Lerez, the search and rescue effort surrounding the bridge had now come to an end.

Throughout the weekend, attempts to recover the bodies were impeded by the river's strong current and high flow because of the intense rains that had been lashing the Galicia region.

On Saturday night, a Monbus bus was travelling between the cities of Lugo and Vigo when it stopped at a correctional facility close to the accident location.

For reasons that are still unknown, it skidded off a straight road on the bridge and fell into the water, at least 40 meters (131 feet), at around 9.30 p.m. local time (2030 GMT).

The initial call to emergency services came from a bystander who saw the protective barrier of the bridge had been seriously damaged. Soon after, while the bus was filling with water, they got a second call from inside.

Emergency rescue personnel were forced to put the operation on hold for over two hours before picking it back up in the morning because the river continued to rise above its overflow threshold during the night.

According to the driver's testimony, the bus had nine passengers in total when it crashed, but eight are now thought to have been on board, according to missing person reports submitted by family.

Alfonso Rueda, the regional president of Galicia, suggested that one of the accident's potential reasons may have been the "extremely terrible" weather.

Source