Bus crash in Argentina Kills Over 40 Police Officers
By JONATHAN GILBERTDEC. 14, 2015
BUENOS AIRES — A bus full of police officers veered off a bridge in northern Argentina early Monday and plunged at least 50 feet into a ditch, local officials said. Forty-two officers were killed and another nine were hospitalized, according to Francisco Marinaro Rodó, the civil defense secretary for Salta Province, where the crash took place around 2 a.m.
The bus was on its way to San Salvador de Jujuy, a city about 175 miles from the border with Bolivia, with between 50 and 60 border police officers on board.
It was traveling along Route 34, a road that is poorly maintained in some sections and has deep potholes, especially near the bridge, in a rural area called Balboa, Mr. Marinaro Rodó said in an interview with Todo Noticias, a television news channel. Pavement close to bridges can be particularly susceptible to damage from heavy trucks braking as they approach, he said.
Local officials said the crash was most likely accidental. Mr. Marinaro Rodó said one of its tires may have blown out. News photographs of the scene showed the bus laying upside down in the ditch.
President Mauricio Macri offered condolences to the victims’ families during a speech on Monday. “We have to improve the country roads, so that these things don’t keep happening,” the president said.
Mr. Macri, who took office on Friday, has promised to modernize Argentina’s neglected northern provinces. As part of a program called the Belgrano Plan, he wants to spend $16 billion improving transportation in the region, including upgrading hundreds of miles of Route 34. The route runs nearly 1,000 miles from the port city of Rosario on the Paraná River to the Bolivian border at Yacuíba.
“The road is full of potholes,” Gustavo Díaz, the head of a volunteer fire department that took part in the emergency response from Rosario de la Frontera, a town near the crash site, told local reporters. “You have to proceed with caution, because we’ve seen various vehicles have accidents or overturn there. Surely, the driver was tired and did not see the pothole.”
Gustavo Solís, the mayor of Rosario de la Frontera, told the local news media, “Those of us who know the area try not to travel there at night.” |
