SITUBONDO, Indonesia, 10 October 2003 — At least 54 people, most of them teenage schoolgirls, were killed when their bus was crushed in a fiery three-vehicle collision in Indonesia, police said yesterday.
Forty-nine girls, aged between 17 and 18, were returning from a three-day field trip to Bali island Wednesday evening when their bus was struck head-on by a container truck whose brakes apparently failed, turning it into an inferno.
The bus was then rammed from behind by a pickup truck on the dark and busy highway near Situbondo in East Java, 830 km (515 miles) east of Jakarta.
Two male students, two teachers and a tour guide for the group also died in the crash, officials said.
Flames and thick smoke quickly engulfed the bus, causing panic among the victims, the driver Arwandu told police.
“I told the children to open the back door but it turned out they could not. Despite my pain from being thrown in the collision, I broke some windows but the fire spread too fast,” he was quoted by Antara news agency as saying.
Wreaths piled up outside the general hospital in Situbondo where the bodies were taken.
Doctors and paramedics registered the details of the dead before identification by relatives. The charred corpses, laid on plastic sheets on the floor, were put in body bags, tagged and moved to another room where they were placed on blocks of ice.
Three busloads of family members were on their way to the hospital and local leaders offered prayers for the dead in the evening.
Some 130 young people from the Yapemda I high school at Sleman near Yogyakarta were returning from the field trip in three buses. The students in the other two buses were unaware of the disaster until they arrived at school yesterday morning.
Of the 54 bodies, 49 had been identified as those of the schoolgirls while the other five were male, said Chief Commissioner Musarif, chief forensic doctor with East Java police.
“Ten of the 49 corpses are waiting to be identified by their relatives who are due to arrive from Yogyakarta anytime now,” Musarif told Elshinta radio.
There were scenes of mass hysteria and fits of weeping, said Martini, a manager at the high school.
“We are all aghast and saddened. Studies have been halted until further notice,” she said. A steady flow of floral tributes were arriving at the school.
“This is the worst traffic accident in Indonesia in the past five years,” the director general for land transport, Iskandar Abubakar, said during a visit to the school. The vehicles were still ablaze some three hours after the accident.
The container truck driver fled and is being hunted by police while his assistant is being questioned. Land transport officials were inspecting the vehicles for road-worthiness and warned of tough penalties if any defects were found.
East Java police chief Heru Susanto said the truck’s fuel tank ruptured after the crash and caused the fire. He said its brakes could have failed on a downhill stretch of the road.
The accident blocked most of the notoriously chaotic highway that links Surabaya to Banyuwangi, where ferries arrive and depart to Bali.
