21 people were killed and at least 15 injured on Tuesday night when a tourist bus shuttling passengers from Venice to a campsite in Marghera plunged about fifteen meters off a bridge in the town of Mestre and then caught fire.
The first rescue efforts were led by witnesses who began pulling people out of the bus with their bare hands until the arrival of ambulances and firefighters. The passengers seem to have been internationals from countries including Germany, Austria and Ukraine. The victims are mostly young individuals, including a baby, a 12-year-old and a minor. As of Wednesday morning, 14 dead and 4 injured are yet to be identified.
"Nobody yet knows exactly what happened," Massimo Piorese, CEO of La Linea which owns the bus in question told LaPress news agency. "There was a fixed camera on the overpass. From what little you can see on the images, you can see the bus arriving at less than 50 kilometres an hour and the stop lights come on – so he would have braked. Then you see that the vehicle leans against the guardrail, overturns and falls."
Translation: The firefighters among the sheets of the bus - the video
15 people were rescued by 60 firefighters who also arrived from the Padua and Treviso. Now that the inspection of the vehicle has been completed, we can exclude the possibility of people still trapped under the vehicle
Though earlier reports claimed that the fire broke out because the bus was methane-powered, Piorese confirms that it was actually electric, a fact that could have avoided an even greater tragedy.
The only Italian victim identified thus far is the driver, a 40-year-old man named Alberto Rizzotto, considered an expert and reliable driver by his colleagues. Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini speculated on Rete4 channel what others are also thinking, that the driver may have been "unwell."
Translation: The main hypothesis at the moment is that the bus driver, Alberto Rizzotto from Treviso, may have fallen ill. The bus left the roadway on the Vempa overpass, broke through the guard rail and ended up in the void near the tracks, catching fire
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni immediately expressed her deep condolences. "I am in contact with Mayor Luigi Brugnaro and Minister (of Transport) Matteo Salvini to follow the news of this tragedy," she said in a statement.
The public is still waiting for medical and legal analyses to establish exactly what happened to cause this tragedy. Flags were lowered at half-mast in the entire Veneto region.
