Translated material
No brakes
A bus carrying Russian tourists crashed in southern Vietnam
Ten people were killed and 15 others were injured when a bus carrying Russian tourists crashed in southern Vietnam on Friday evening. Among the dead were nine Russian citizens and a Vietnamese citizen who worked as a guide-translator. According to preliminary data, the brakes of the bus failed on a dangerous section of the mountain road, after which it rolled into a ravine and was almost completely destroyed. Yesterday, a special flight from the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations departed for Vietnam, which will take the injured Russians home.The accident occurred on Friday at approximately 19.00 local time (15.00 Moscow time) in the southern part of the country, in Binh Thuan province. Two busloads of Russian tourists were returning to the seaside resort of Phan Thiet from a day trip to the mountain town of Dalat. One of the cars, in which there were 24 Russian tourists (including two children), as well as a Vietnamese guide and driver, for an as yet unknown reason suddenly flew off the road and slid into a ravine about 100 meters deep. Moreover, no one from the outside saw the moment of the accident.
“The bus flew down a slope of 200 meters and got stuck in the bushes. One of the victims was able to get out onto the road and was found by employees of the local hydroelectric power station. She was able to contact her husband by phone, and if not for this call, the bus could have been discovered much later,” said Vladimir Klimov, the Russian Consul in Ho Chi Minh City. Soon after the tourist managed to report the accident, local rescuers began to arrive at the scene of the emergency and began evacuating the victims.
According to initial reports from Vietnamese media, 15 people were killed and another 11 were injured. The DPA agency reported 12 deaths, and Reuters reported 11. Later, Russian diplomats and representatives of the Ministry of Emergency Situations clarified that ten people died in the accident - eight of them died on the spot, two more died later in the hospital. The victims were taken to a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City. Of the 14 hospitalized Russians, three, according to doctors, are in very serious condition, the rest are in a condition of moderate severity. Almost all victims suffered multiple fractures. According to the press attache of the Russian Embassy in Vietnam, Alexei Shevtsov, one of the tourists, who called help to the scene of the tragedy, refused hospitalization. She received only minor injuries. Among the tourists there were 16 Muscovites, four residents of St. Petersburg and four residents of Surgut. The full list of dead and wounded is published on the website of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations.
The causes of the accident are still being determined by the Vietnamese authorities. Immediately after the tragedy, information appeared that the accident occurred due to the fact that a motorcyclist could have cut off the bus. But later the surviving driver of the car, Nguyen The Lam, reported that the car's brakes had failed. According to him, while descending from a mountain pass, he saw a car driving in the oncoming lane, tried to slow down, but the brake did not work, the bus skidded, and he lost control. Having broken through the barrier, the bus fell into a ravine. As a result of the fall, the roof of the car was completely torn off. A representative of the travel company Lanta-Tour Voyage, which sold tours to Russians, said that the owner of the bus had a license for this business, that is, the qualifications of the driver and the technical condition of the car must be at the appropriate level.
Yesterday, by order of President Dmitry Medvedev, an Il-76 EMERCOM plane flew to Vietnam, carrying doctors from the All-Russian Center for Disaster Medicine “Zashchita”, Tsentrospas EMERCOM of Russia, forensic experts and psychologists. The aircraft is equipped with special modules for transporting seriously wounded patients. It is expected that the special flight will arrive in Ho Chi Minh City early on Monday morning and fly back on the same day.
A car accident in Vietnam is the first serious incident abroad in 2009 involving Russian tourists. In 2008, at least 45 Russian tourists were killed and more than 100 people were injured as a result of road accidents in various countries around the world. The largest car accident in recent memory involving Russian tourists occurred on December 16 near the resort town of Eilat in southern Israel. Then the bus carrying the tourist group also fell into the abyss. As a result, 24 people were killed and another 25 were injured, all tourists from St. Petersburg. A similar incident occurred just a few days later - on December 24 - in Egypt. There, a minibus with 22 tourists returning to hotels in Sharm el-Sheikh after an excursion to Jerusalem crashed into a taxi, causing it to fly off the road and overturn. Then seven Russians died and 17 more were injured.