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Published: March 24th 2006
bus
Bus wreckage seen from the front. The driver was sitting at the right side (the worst damaged side). It was about 0.45 am Wednesday morning, 12 hours into an 18 hours bus ride from Inle Lake to Yangon (Burma) and I had just fallen a sleep after a midnight stop when I was violently thrown against the seat in front of me and there was a loud cracking sound. After that the bus was full of screaming people and began filling with smoke.
Our bus had hit something... I could not see what it was because of the smoke and people desperately trying to open the windows and getting out through the back. I saw my seat was pretty much bent out of shape from the shock but I didn't see any fire. My first thought was that we had hit a cow or something. It seemed that the driver was trying to get the bus started again. I packed all my stuff and got out through the emergency exit in the back.
That's when I saw the ravage that had been done. The bus had run into a logging truck and 5-6 logs (timber/trees with+/- 1 m diameter) that were sticking out from the back of the truck, were now sticking 2-3 m into the bus and had destroyed the whole front and the first 2-3 rows of seats. As I was looking at it with Kim (New Zealand fellow traveller) our first thoughts were that several people got killed.
I had just taken my weekly malaria pill 1 hour before and these have the side effect that they completely knock me out for a couple of hours each time. As I was looking at the wreckage and the screaming people around, it took all I had not to faint.
Soon a 1st body was taken out of the truck. It was the back up driver. He was sleeping behind the driver and probably got one of the logs on the chest and must have been killed immediately. The driver himself had logs all around him but he was alive but very badly wounded. 3 more people were badly wounded. Several more had cuts and bruises. These people were taken on cycles, motorbikes and pick up trucks to some local hospital. The real hospitals were 5 or 7 hours away. Ambulances do not exist and the police only kept busy trying to get traffic around the bus.
When looking at the damage it's a small miracle that only that many people got hurt/killed.
Probably the driver fell a sleep and ran into a moving logging truck. If the truck had been standing still (which a lot of them are) the damage would have been a lot worse.
We were lucky. I had booked my ticket 5 days in advance. If it hadn't been local holidays I would have been sitting in the first rows and not 'safely' on row 6 as I was now.
It was also good to have the New Zealand people with me. When all people were freed from the bus, Harvey decided we needed to "get our luggage and get the f*ck out of there". A friendly bus driver from another company offered us a ride for the last 5 hrs. I didn't close an eye and was bracing for another crash as soon as the driver even touched the break.
During the day as I was walking around town (without having slept) I was reliving the crash and was still wondering if all this had really happened or whether it was a bad (Lariam) dream.
The next day a lot of travellers came talk to me about the crash (news spread fast and people I met in Inle came look for me in Yangon). It felt good to be able to talk about it...
This accident was a big anti climax to 3 great weeks In Burma. More about that later.
I'm taking another night bus in Thailand tonight...
Regards,
Jan
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Peter
non-member comment
Niet te doen...
Amai, wat een verhaal. Take care en dank je engelbewaarder maar!