Fabio Abrego was on his way to work waiting for a bus around 4 a.m. in Gualaca, a province of Chiriquí in Panama, about 50 kilometers from the border with Costa Rica, when he heard a vehicle brake sharply. Within minutes it was all crying, screaming and noise.
Abrego was one of the witnesses to the traffic accident that occurred in the area when a bus carrying about 66 migrants to a migrant shelter in Los Planes crashed into a ravine.
“I heard the bus… stopped and I heard the noise. I saw two dead children below and a woman trapped on top of the glass of the bus. There was a man with no hands, another with no head lying on the other side… it was traumatic,” Abrego said Voice of America.
The Movement of Victims of Road Violence in Panama spoke out after an accident in Gualaca https://t.co/iyaBmeyApc
– Panama in seconds (@ensegundos_pa) February 17, 2023
In total, at least 41 people have died and about 22 are being treated at different hospitals in the country, according to the latest report from the Panamanian government Thursday afternoon.
Most of the passengers on the crashed bus were migrants from Ecuador, Haiti and Venezuela, Panamanian authorities reported Thursday.
One of the worst accidents in recent years
The accident, considered by doctors and locals to be one of the worst tragedies in Panama in the past 30 years, also mobilized the government, which has set up local hospitals to care for migrants.
According to the Panamanian government, of the 66 migrants transported on the crashed bus, 22 were from Ecuador, 16 from Haiti, 11 from Venezuela, 6 from Brazil, 5 from Colombia, 2 from Cameroon, 2 from Cuba and 1 from Nigeria.
Panama requests genetic data to identify deaths in migrant accident https://t.co/ukuT65Q5V2
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Rolando Gabriel, medical director of the Rafael Hernández Hospital, where the surviving patients are hospitalized, told VOA that 8 of them are in intensive care due to the accident and the rest are in the operating room.
“Yesterday (Wednesday) there were about 65 people, all the hospital staff were prepared,” said the doctor VOA. “Luckily we were prepared and all the services were in order, from stretcher carriers to ambulances and paramedics, people from internal medicine, surgery and orthopaedics, critical care, neurosurgeons were in the ER and all the residents were coming in to see what they could do in the emergency room emergency room”.
The specialist indicated that there are patients who are stable but in a delicate condition, with multiple fractures “of all kinds”.
“There is a patient who had multiple fractures in just one arm. Most of these are leg fractures, pelvic, upper arm and shoulder fractures, which we find most often, and polytrauma in surgery, which are under surveillance,” he explained.
Andoni Morales, a driver in the area, said they often appear at the scene of the accident because of the fog and “because of the overconfidence” of some drivers.
“It’s a mountainous area. Sometimes it gets very foggy. I think that a lot of overconfidence is above all very dangerous. People don’t know the road, they trust each other and at any moment a bend can surprise you, as in the case of the bus.”
“It is suspected that the man passed through the entrance of the migrant center … then he drove around and was surprised by the curve, he was also speeding. It’s what they say,” he added.
In addition to the migrants, two people from Panama who were traveling on the bus and the driver died.