Friday, August 19, 2011

Dump Trucks: Not Intended as Hearse/Mass Transit Hybrid Vehicles

What do you get when you crowd one dead person in a dump truck with a several dozen mourners?

A damaged coffin and more dead people!

Malfunctioning brakes caused a municipal dump truck to speed downhill and fall on its side in Barili town, south Cebu, killing eleven people in a large group of mourners on their way to a funeral yesterday.

The accident left at least 49 injured, many of them relatives and neighbors of the 68-year-old woman whose coffin they were accompanying to the St. Anne Parish Church in the town proper for a requiem Mass at 2 p.m.

The government truck was borrowed as a funeral hearse, a common cost-saving practice in rural areas where families can’t afford to hire their own vehicles.

Eleven passengers were killed by the impact, including a 60-year-old woman.

[...]

The funeral of Tranquilina Diagbil finally took place later in the afternoon. Another truck picked up the damaged coffin and brought it to the town proper for burial, according to the mayor’s staffer Salome Merelos.

[Inquirer News]

No comments:

Post a Comment