Post date: Mar 16, 2012 6:26:48 PM
SION, SWITZERLAND (MARCH 16, 2012) (REUTERS) - Swiss investigators looking into the cause of Tuesday's deadly bus crash said on Friday (March 16) that speed did not cause the tunnel accident that killed 28 people.
Officials investigating the fatal Swiss bus accident that killed 28 people, most of them children, say speed was not a cause for the crash.
Swiss police have been investigating how the coach, carrying 52 passengers, crashed into a tunnel wall."We already know thanks to examinations of the disc, visual examinations, that it's speed was less than the authorised speed limit in the tunnel. So we can deduce that speed was definitely not the cause of the accident," prosecutor Olivier Elsig said.
Elsig cast doubt on reports in some Swiss and Belgian media that the driver had been busy loading a DVD player just before the crash. Investigators have established that no other vehicle was involved, that the bus was not speeding and that the driver had not drunk alcohol. Nor had he had a heart attack.
"Given all these different elements, I believe that with what we've done, two hypotheses remain, and they haven't changed: that there was a technical fault with the vehicle, the experts will tell us, or a human error resulting from a mistake or from not paying sufficient attention or even from an illness, although the latter seems less credible," he added.
Twenty-two children around the age of 12 and six adults died in the crash. The school group had been heading home from a ski trip when the crash occurred.
Earlier on Friday bodies of those who had died arrived in the towns of Lommel and Heverlee, home to most of the victims.
Of the survivors, some returned to Belgium on Friday.
The spokesperson for Valais Hospital, Florence Renggli said that all the injured from Valais area hospitals had been transferred to Belgium under proper precautions.
"The transfers were made gradually today, with of course the support of REGA (Swiss airborne rescue forces). It was important for us to have a medical transfer, because most of these children still had to stay lying down, they were attached to machines, they were in casts, it was of course necessary to make sure that the transfer was carried out in the best sanitary and medical conditions," Renggli said.
Christian Varone, chief of police in the southern Swiss canton of Valais said all area officials assisted in the transfer of the bodies of the victims.
"We, the authorities, the police forces, the legal team really wanted, to get the unfortunate victims back to their home countries in the most dignified way possible. We've had to face up to seventy two hours off tough decision-making but I can tell you that every minute we were very touched and that goes for me and for everyone around this table, and everyone involved," Varone said.
Belgian military aircraft earlier on Friday brought home the bodies of the dead and the country observed a minute's silence during a national day of mourning.