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Italy’s Venice Mourns 21 Killed In Bus Crash

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

VENICE, ITALY (Worthy News) – People of Italy’s postcard-perfect city of Venice mourned Wednesday the 21 foreign tourists who were killed when their all-electric shuttle bus crashed through an overpass guardrail and fence, plunging more than 10 meters (33 feet) to the ground.

The bus, which was just a year old, crashed to the ground and landed upside down on Tuesday night in the famed area of northeastern Italy. The 40-year-old driver, identified as Alberto Rizzotto, was among those killed, and 18 people were injured, authorities said.

Among the killed passengers were five people from war-torn Ukraine and one German, according to officials. Two of the dead were reportedly children. The rest of those who perished were yet to be identified.

The injured included at least four Ukrainians, part of a larger group that had a 3-year-old girl who suffered severe burns, as well as visitors from Spain, Austria, France, Croatia, and Germany. Nine were treated in intensive care for trauma, including burns and fractures. Survivors included a young Austrian brother and sister, authorities said.

Authorities had yet to find the cause of Tuesday’s crash in Mestre, part of the Venice municipality, which was described as an “apocalyptic scene.”

Italy’s fire services said they would investigate whether the bus’s battery may have caused a fire to spread more rapidly after it overheated, highlighting broader concerns about electric vehicles.

According to the company website of the bus operator, the bus was electric-powered.

ACTS OF HEROISM

Amid the misery, acts of heroism emerged. When Boubacar Touré and his flatmates heard a sudden, thundering crash beside their apartment, they thought it was an earthquake.

But then they opened their kitchen windows, where they were cooking dinner, and one shouted: “A bus has fallen.”

“We ran down to the spot where the bus was on fire, and I heard a woman screaming, ‘My baby, my baby,'” 27-year-old Boubacar, who is from The Gambia, told media, his eyes heavy with exhaustion.

“I managed to pull her through the window and then pulled out her son, who was badly burnt but still alive.”

The road where the accident happened had an aging guardrail and rusted fence, underscoring broader concerns about infrastructure issues in Italy. Footage showed the city-owned bus disappear from the frame as another larger bus traveling behind it continued along the elevated road.

Prosecutors said the shuttle bus scraped against the guardrail for at least 50 meters (yards) before its fiery crash to a surface road opposite the Venetian borough of Mestre’s train station.

The tourists are all believed to have stayed at the Hu Venezia Camping in Town, just a 15-minute drive from the shuttle bus’s pickup point at Piazzale Roma, at the edge of Venice’s famed canals linked to the mainland by a bridge.

CITY IN MOURNING

The crash has shocked Venetians, two-thirds of whom live on the mainland.

As the extent of the tragedy became clear, many stopped Wednesday morning to pay their respects, staring at the gaping guardrail and fence.

One man stopped on his motorcycle to tie plastic flowers to a post, witnesses said.

The Veneto region declared three days of mourning, and flags were flown at half-staff at government business.

Family members of the dead and survivors were trickling into Venice from around Europe on Wednesday. For them and survivors, it will be a long road to healing, an expert suggested.

The survivors “are still in what we call the shock phase, with confused memories; they are still in that state of agitation and confusion typical of the traumatic event,” said Rita Lorio, a psychologist at Mestre’s main hospital, one of five treating the injured.

“They are not yet in that phase of awareness of what happened.”