Posted by TINA ANTHONY, Kano on
‘We heard the 60 Kano auto crash victims' agonising cries for help but left them to die because we could do nothing'
‘We heard the 60 Kano auto crash victims' agonising cries for help but left them to die because we could do nothing'
AS memories linger of last Sunday's accident in Kano that led to the untimely death of over 60 persons including two babies of four months and two weeks old respectively, people who were at the scene of the accident to rescue the victims have attributed the high number of death to the absence of equipment.
Sunday Vanguard gathered that the rescue teams from Kano State Fire Service, Federal Road Safety Commission and the state police command got to the scene of the accident quite early on the day of the incident, but there was little or nothing they could do to help the passengers trapped in the Mercedes Benz bus which was fully loaded because the bus landed upside down in the river under the Tambarawa Bridge thereby making it impossible for the passengers to come out, and the rescuers could not pull the victims out of the bus for several hours.
Eyewitnesses lamented that many people got to the scene of the accident which occurred at about 5.00 a.m. last Sunday, and when they got there, many of the passengers, including the babies, were still alive, going by the cries of agony coming out of the vehicle. They said because none of the rescue teams from the state capital went with equipment, they could not do anything for hours.
According to them, the police team in a patrol jeep that got to the scene first had nothing to save the situation, because they were poorly equipped. The fire service team had only gadgets made for rescuing people drowned, which could not be used for anything in that situation. When the Federal Road Safety Commission rescue team got there, the villagers said they thought they were well equipped, but to their dismay, they were also poorly equipped and helpless. They told Sunday Vanguard that the combined efforts of the rescue teams and the villagers could not move the bus which lay upside down.
Sunday Vanguard also gathered from the villagers and rescue teams that without local tools and assistance of a blacksmith from a nearby village identified as Malam Iro who provided local axes, cutlasses and other iron tools, the situation would have been worse as they said they spent over two hours waiting for the police crane which got to the place hours later, and lifted the vehicle out of the river.
One of the rescue team officials told Sunday Vanguard that the Federal Government should be blamed for the death of nearly all the passengers of the ill-fated vehicle. The officer said all the rescue teams were poorly equipped because their organisations either did not procure for them necessary tools for such rescue assignment or the Federal Government did not release the funds needed for the procurement.
He said they worked for over four hours trying to cut the body of the bus to evacuate the victims but only managed to pull out 12 injured victims as the rest were already dead at the time they pulled off the roof of the bus. "We knew what to do to save the lives of the victims, but we were helpless because we didn't have the necessary tools to cut the bus and pull them out. Even the vehicle was too heavy for us to push. In fact, with the help of the sympathetic villagers who joined us in the rescue mission, we could not lift the vehicle", the official stated, explaining, "I feel very sad any time I remember that I heard the cries of agony of my fellow human beings and little babies but could not help them with my two hands. It was a traumatic and sad experience that I will not forget in a hurry".
The villagers told Sunday Vanguard that they were surprised that all the rescue teams came empty-handed except the fire service officers who were ready to jump into the river to rescue those drowned. Even then, the fire service men had no tools to help the situation.
The officer at Dawakin Kudu Police station in charge of the area of the accident, Inspector Peter Mutuwa, while narrating his account of the accident, said the police did not have any tool to work in such accident, which was why he immediately called for assistance from the state capital. Mutuwa confessed that in his few years as officer in charge of accident in the area, he had never witnessed such an accident, and admitted that relevant authorities should see what happened at Tambarawa Bridge as a lesson and ensure that they equip their search and rescue departments with all necessary tools to operate in future accidents.
It was very clear from expert observations that the driver of the G.U.O Okeke and Sons bus dozed off and lost control of the vehicle which left the main road, hit an already weak edge of the Tambarawa Bridge before it fell into the river. Though some observers said the presence of a strong iron bar by the edge of the bridge would have at least saved the situation a little, the fact remains that the Federal Ministry of Works should urgently look into the state of the bridges along our highways.