'A honk, a bang and a ball of fire'

BAME PIET and
MPHO TLALE
Staff Writers | Wednesday June 16, 2010 00:00

 

Two people who were in the sedan the bus crashed into died on the spot. Apparently the sedan, a Ford Focus, was trying to turn right onto the road to Gaborone just under a kilometre from the Mmamashia bus stop. 

Neo Motlogelwa, who was travelling to Francistown on the ill-fated bus, told Mmegi yesterday that she heard hooting, a bang and the bus swerved from side to side, dragging the sedan from its underbelly for a hundred meters or so from the point of impact.

At least three streetlights were flattened to the ground in the process. Motlogelwa says as panic-stricken passengers yelled in horror, it emerged that the exit door was locked and everyone jumped through the windows to save their lives just as fire broke out inside.

'I was holding my one-year old baby and I handed it to a stranger through the window,' Motlogelwa says.

'Everyone jumped out of the burning bus, leaving their belongings inside. We lost everything - our clothing, documents, money, everything! I have to start the process of replacing my documents and buying new clothes.'

Motlogelwa is full of praise for the bus driver to whom she says they all owe their lives.

The passengers escaped with only minor injuries sustained as they hit the ground. An eyewitness who works at a nearby construction site says he had just spoken to the driver of the sedan who had complained that the car was overheating.

'He said he suspected a fault in the radiator but he wanted to go to Palapye,' says the eyewitness who does not want to be identified. 'I warned him that it was not safe to go over such a long distance (nearly 300km) in a car in such a condition. We parted ways only for me to hear a bang and people screaming a moment later.

'The driver apparently died upon impact of the vehicles, while the woman who was accompanying him suffered a painfully slow death. It was a ghastly sight.

She was burning alive but there was nothing we could do because she was trapped in the car.'  It is noontide a day after the accident, and the man says the relatives of the deceased woman had visited the scene earlier in the morning.

Meanwhile, a female motorist had to be rushed to Princess Marina Hospital after escaping death by a whisker when her car drove into a seven-meter deep pit a few metres from the wreckage of the burned vehicles.

According to the woman's passenger who escaped unscathed, the woman was looking at the burned bus when she lost control of her car. An excavator at the nearby construction site was called to lift the badly damaged car and its passengers from the pit.

Attempts to contact the police were futile as senior officers were attending a seminar at the Special Support Group camp at Maruapula in Gaborone.