The fall of a bus and two other vehicles to a precipice pushed by a landslide due to the rains left at least nine dead and fifty injured in Costa Rica, rescuers and hospital services reported this Sunday.
The coordinator of the Costa Rican Red Cross, Andrés Álvarez, said on Twitter that nine people died in the accident that occurred towards the end of Saturday afternoon in a mountain pass called El Hundimiento in Cambronero, province of Alajuela, about 80 km west From the capital.
According to a list of the Judicial Investigation Organism, published by the press, the fatalities are three women between the ages of 51 and 61, and six men between the ages of 21 and 66. The Red Cross highlighted that four people are missing.
The Costa Rican Social Security Fund said that about fifty injured people were treated in various health centers near the scene of the tragedy where rescuers, firefighters and other aid services began the rescue tasks on Saturday night.
The Costa Rican president, Rodrigo Chaves, declared three days of national mourning because of the tragedy in Cambronero. In addition, he canceled his trip to participate in the UN General Assembly in New York due to emergencies due to downpours in the country.
"I feel the obligation to stay to attend to the emergency, seeking sufficient actions and resources to attend to the enormous material and human damage, including accompanying the families of the nine compatriots who unfortunately lost their lives in the Cambronero accident."said.
About 47 people were traveling on the bus, which fell into the ravine 75 meters deep, Germán Alfaro, manager of the company that owns it, told La Nación newspaper. The group had left San José, the capital of the country, heading for the province of Guanacaste (northwest).
Images released by the relief bodies showed the landslide and the bus at the bottom of the precipice of this mountainous area, affected by the rainy season that hits Costa Rica and the rest of Central America.
During the rescue tasks, a unit of dogs trained to locate victims was deployed.
"They have abandoned us for years"complained Gilber Martínez, a resident of the town, in statements to the Channel 7 television news about the conditions of this highway crossing where the residents denounced the absence of containment railings or road signs.
"These types of situations are unpredictable. They are not the fault of the government, they are not the fault of the bus company. It’s a situation we can’t predict"justified the Minister of Public Works and Transportation, Luis Amador.
In March 2021, a report from the National Laboratory of Materials and Structural Models of the University of Costa Rica (LanammeUCR) warned that the route through Cambronero presented a high risk of subsidence or collapse at three points.