School bus rolled into the abyss with children on board in the village of Santander

A bus that provided the school route service suffered a tragic accident with dozens of children on board, as it crossed the Alto de San Pedro, sector of the Laguna de Ortices, in a rural area of the municipality of San Andrés (Santander).

This was the first day of operation of the school route for students of the La Laguna de Ortices Institute, attached to the municipality. When the accident occurred, 25 children and five adults were making the return journey, at one o'clock in the afternoon of this Tuesday, March 22, on the Malaga road.

Suddenly, the driver lost control due to unknown causes and the school bus rolled about 250 meters down the hill. Some time later, authorities and relief agencies arrived to transfer the wounded.

The inhabitants of the García Róvira province who witnessed the accident had reported the presence of deaths and injuries. With the medical staff present, the death of six minors was verified, whose identities and ages have not yet been disclosed.

In addition, 17 more children and the driver needed a transfer to the health centers in San Andrés and Molgavita. The prognosis of them is reserved. For now, the crashed bus remains on the track and will only be removed after a preliminary investigation into the reasons for the accident.

Since the condition of this road is optimal in this particular section, according to the residents of the sector, the main hypotheses point to human error or mechanical failure of the car.

Santander Governor Mauricio Aguilar Hurtado confirmed the news through his Twitter account.

In Santander, the Official Volunteer Fire Department of Floridablanca warned about the official start of the rainy season for 2022 in this region. On the first day, both Bucaramanga and the metropolitan area recorded floods that left several municipalities incommunicado due to the high level of rivers and the overflow of some of them.

In addition to this, several citizens reported floods that ended up directly affecting their homes, as the water covered several centimeters of them; mainly in the municipality of Girón, Malaga and San Gil.

The road between Bucaramanga and San Gil presents a single lane passage at this time, as the rainfall the night before caused a great fall of trees and rocks on this national road. In the vicinity of the Curos sector, the authorities reported the total closure of the road in the evening hours; however, machinery arrived after this. The Traffic Police and Firefighters of the municipality of Piedecuesta, after the arduous operations carried out, were able to enable the passage to a single lane in this area of the province of García Rovira.

In turn, the authorities enabled the passage on the Acapulco highway, because the flooding of the La Ruitoca stream caused the temporary closure of the road, taking into account that water covered part of this artery. The Floridablanca firefighters arrived at the scene to verify the behavior of this watershed and, likewise, all the rivers that flow in the vicinity of the motorway between Floridablanca and Piedecuesta. For the time being, the authorities decreed the orange alert throughout the department in the face of the upcoming rains.

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