A pregnant Croatian woman on her honeymoon was also among the dead. Her husband
is seriously injured. There are no Austrians among the victims. In Italy, however, there is a debate about the dilapidated infrastructure.
All 21 people who died in the bus crash in Mestre, near Venice, northern Italy, have been identified. Nine Ukrainians, four Romanians and three Germans were killed, as was the Italian bus driver, a spokesman for the mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, announced late on Wednesday. Other deaths came from Portugal, South Africa and Croatia. They also included a small child.
Identification of the victims was problematic because many tourists on board the crashed bus did not have documents with them. For unknown reasons, the bus fell from a bridge onto the railroad tracks and caught fire. This is another reason why establishing identity is complicated. The deceased were deposited in Mestre’s morgue, where family members were traveling.
Young Croatian woman died shortly after her wedding – six months pregnant
A young Croatian woman who was on her honeymoon with her husband died on the bus. The couple from Split got married on September 10th. The deceased was six months pregnant. Her husband is seriously injured in hospital in the city of Mirano, Italian media reported.
18 people were injured, five of them in mortal danger, including a small child. Three days of mourning were declared in the Venice region because of the accident. The Senate in Rome held a minute’s silence on Wednesday to honor the dead.
According to Itamaraty, no Austrians are involved. Health authorities in the Veneto region initially spoke of two injured children from the Alpine republic. According to the most recent information, these would be German citizens.
Debate over dilapidated infrastructure
The accident sparked a debate in Italy about dilapidated infrastructure. The issue of guardrail safety on roads and highways is coming back into the spotlight. As happened on July 28, 2013, when a bus fell from a viaduct on the A16, near Monteforte Irpino, in the Campania region, in southern Italy. 40 people died in the accident.
“Many of our roads are still inadequately protected. In many arteries, the protection devices are outdated”, warned Alfonso Montella, professor of roads, railways and airports at the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Federico II University of Naples. (APA)