Screams of Swiss coach crash children ‘impossible to describe’, say rescuers

Renato Kalbermatten, spokesman for the Swiss police, confirmed that the theory
was being examined, although CCTV footage “did not make the situation very
clear”.

Prosecutor Olivier Elsig, who is investigating Tuesday night’s tragedy, has
ruled out speeding as a possible cause, admitting that “we are open to all
theories”.

Accident investigators had previously suggested that the driver may have
suffered a heart attack.

It came as Alain Rittemer, chief of emergency services in the Canton of
Valais, said it took rescuers a full two hours to work their way through the
“apocalypse” of mangled wreckage.

“The first thing we heard on arriving at the scene was the screams of the
children – it’s almost impossible to describe,” said Mr Rittemer.

“Hearing the screams put rescuers in a state of shock. All are experienced,
but you cannot imagine what it was like.”

The mangled remains of the bus that crashed on Wednesday night

The crash, in which 28 people were also seriously injured, happened shortly
after the party of 52 schoolchildren and staff from Belgium and Holland set
off for home following a holiday in the Alpine ski resort of Val d’Annivers.

The coach entered the two-mile-long Sierre tunnel on the A9 motorway at around
9.15pm on Tuesday and clipped the kerb in the outside lane, before careering
into a concrete wall.

Mr Rittemer said his team of paramedics arrived within 20 minutes, and had to
break their way in through windows at the back.

Tributes have been laid at the scene of the crash near Sierre,
Switzerland

“You could imagine that the children whom we found were our own,” said Mr
Rittemer. “This was a vision which we were not used to seeing, and I’ve been
doing this job for 20 years.

“Our main aim was to get to the children, most of whom could not move because
they were trapped in the piles of scrap metal.

“That said, we did not need to speak. We only needed to look in their eyes and
hold their hands.”

Mr Rittemer added: “We reached the last casualty two hours after our arrival
on the scene 20 minutes after the accident.

“The last dead body, that of the second driver, was finally removed at 4.15am.”

The victims came from St Lambert School, in the north eastern Belgian town of
Heverlee, and from the Stekske School in Lommel, on the Belgian border close
to the Dutch city of Eindhoven.

Among the 28 dead were seven children from Holland. A German and a Polish
national were also among the injured.

Many of the bodies were Thursday due to be repatriated to Belgium.

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