Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

VENICE

At least 21 dead after Venice bus plunges from bridge

At least 21 people, including two children and foreign tourists, were killed Tuesday and several others wounded when a bus running on methane plunged off a bridge in Venice and burst into flames.

Published: 3 October 2023 22:05 CEST
Updated: 4 October 2023 08:55 CEST
At least 21 dead after Venice bus plunges from bridge
Emergency services at the site of the bus crash in Mestre on Tuesday night. (Photo by Marco SABADIN / AFP)

“The bus flipped upside down. The impact was terrible because it fell from over 10 metres,” Mauro Luongo, fire brigade commander of Venice, told reporters at the scene.

The methane-powered bus was returning from Venice’s historic centre to a campsite when the accident occurred around 7.30pm.

READ ALSO: What do we know so far about the deadly Venice bus crash?

“A tragedy has struck our community this evening”, mayor Luigi Brugnaro wrote on Facebook, describing the site of the crash as “an apocalyptic scene”.

“The provisional toll is at least 21 fatalities and over 20 people hospitalised,” said Luca Zaia, the governor of the Veneto region, deploring a “tragedy of enormous proportions”.

“Efforts are on to extract and identify the bodies,” he said. “The victims and the wounded include people of several nationalities, not just Italians”

Firefighters said the bus caught fire and careered off the Rizzardi flyover, a road straddling a railway line and linking the Mestre and Marghera districts of the northern Italian city.

A city hall official said the dead included Ukrainian tourists while Italian news agency ANSA said the fatalities included German and French citizens.

Rescuers at the site of the bus crash in Mestre on Tuesday night. (Photo by Marco SABADIN / AFP)

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her “profound condolences”.

“I am in contact with mayor Luigi Brugnaro and (Transport Minister) Matteo Salvini in order to follow the news of this tragedy,” she said in a statement.

Salvini said the cause of the accident could be the driver suddenly taking sick or becoming unwell.

According to Corriere della Sera, the bus swerved off the bridge after smashing through the barrier and fell near railway tracks about 30 metres (100 feet) below.

The newspaper said the bus caught fire after hitting some power lines and “crumpled in on itself” in the blaze.

Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said, “The aggravating factor was methane and the fire thus spread rapidly”.

“I fear that the death toll will rise,” he added.

Francesso Moraglia, the Patriarch of Venice, was at the site where he blessed the corpses — covered with white shrouds on which bouquets of red flowers had been placed.

French President Emmanuel Macron and European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen offered their condolences.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said she was “deeply saddened by the terrible bus tragedy… In this night of grief, my thoughts are with the victims, their families and friends”.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the German foreign affairs department told AFP its embassy in Rome was working with Italian authorities to verify whether German nationals were among the victims.

In July 2018, a bus carrying a group of some 50 holidaymakers back to Naples fell off a viaduct near the city killing 40 people in all.  

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

STATISTICS

Are Italy’s workplaces more dangerous than elsewhere in Europe?

Following reports of yet another deadly workplace accident in Italy, does the country really perform worse than its European neighbours when it comes to worker safety?

Published: 8 May 2024 10:48 CEST
Are Italy’s workplaces more dangerous than elsewhere in Europe?

On Monday, five workers maintenance workers were killed on the island of Sicily after inhaling poisonous fumes at a sewage treatment plant.

This latest tragedy follows the high-profile deaths of five workers at a Florence construction site in February, and the deaths of seven workers in an explosion at a hydroelectric plant outside Bologna in April.

The frequency with which these stories appear in the headlines can make it seem like there’s a major workplace incident every other week in Italy.

The issue even made it into this year’s Sanremo music festival with Paolo Jannacci and Stefano Massini’s performance of L’Uomo nel lampo (‘The man in the flash’), introduced by host Amadeus with a sombre reflection on the number of people killed on the job in Italy every day (around three).

READ ALSO: Rome square filled with coffins in protest over Italy’s workplace deaths

But does Italy really perform significantly worse than the rest of Europe when it comes to worker protections, or does it just sometimes feel that way?

According to data from the European Commission’s statistics office, Eurostat, in 2021 (the most recent year for which data is available) Italy had the eighth highest number of fatalities out of the 27 EU countries, with 2.66 deaths per 100,000 workers – worse than Spain and Portugal, but better than France and Austria.

The worst three countries for worker deaths were Latvia, with 4.29 deaths per 100,000, followed by Lithuania (3.75) and Malta (3.34); while the three least-fatal countries for workers were Finland (0.75), Greece (0.58) and Holland (0.33).

Workplace deaths in Europe in 2021. Source: Eurostat

If you look at Eurostat’s standardised incidence rates – which adjust for the fact that domestic economies rely to a greater or lesser extent on different industries that carry different levels of worker risk – Italy remains in eighth place, but performs slightly worse, with more than 3 deaths per 100,000.

Data from Italy’s state-run Workers Compensation Authority, INAIL, shows that worker deaths in Italy dropped from more than ten per day in the early 1960’s to around one third that number in the early 90’s, but haven’t significantly declined since then.

INAIL figures also show that 191 people died at work in the first quarter of 2024 – no worse than any time in the past decade, when the numbers have consistently hovered around 200.

That’s not good enough for workers’ rights groups, who say those in power are failing to enforce adequate worker safety protections.

The Palermo chapter of workers union CGIL staged a general strike and a protest outside the city’s prefecture on Tuesday, following a national protest calling for better worker safety protections last month.

Cardboard coffins fill Rome’s Piazza del Popolo on March 19th in a protest drawing attention to the number of deaths at work in Italy. Photo by Tiziana FABI / AFP.

“A business model based on contracts, subcontracts and precariousness is a model that kills,” CGIL general secretary Maurizio Landini told reporters.

Unions are calling for “continuous and comprehensive inspections, supervision of the contracting system, and more attention to the training of workers.”

Initial reports showed that none of the workers who died on Monday were wearing personal protective equipment. One was retired, and two were not technically qualified to carry out the works.

Italian President Sergio Mattarella described the incident as “yet another unacceptable workplace massacre,” adding that he hoped that “full light will be shed” on the causes of the accident.

In a 2023 report, INAIL’s supervisory board noted that the authority had a significant budget surplus, but that it couldn’t be used for accident prevention because current regulations ringfence the funds for compensation payouts.

The authority’s exclusive focus on building up financial reserves for insurance claims while neglecting to fund worker safety initiatives is counter-productive, the board wrote, “perpetuating a vicious circle that diverts resources needed for prevention by pouring them into the Treasury in excess of real needs.”

Instead of simply building up reserves, they argue, the institute should focus its efforts on “decisive intervention” to reduce workplace accidents, “including through the funding of prevention initiatives”.

SHOW COMMENTS