‘One bus carried petrol’ – Ambulance officer identifies three mistakes in Kintampo road carnage
At least 30 people have died in a road carnage on the Kintampo road in another avoidable tragedy in the Bono East region.
The two buses – a Yutong and a 207 Benz bus – collided head-on Monday dawn at about 4am.
The accident has reset a discussion on needless road accidents and an ambulance officer at Kintampo North Municipality, Joseph, who helped convey the injured and the charred remains has offered some explanations.
First off, it was not the road, he ruled out a familiar suspect in Ghana’s road carnages.
“It is a very nice road, correct one,” he spoke on JoyNews in an interview, monitored by theghanareport.com.
According to him, the Yutong bus driver some moments before the tragedy had broken through a police barrier. “They stopped them but he refused to stop.”
The bus driver travelling from Bawku would later make a second mistake “not far from where the accident happened” as he veered into the lane of the 207 Benz bus, moving from the opposite direction.
In the wrong move, he crashed the passengers, their bodies, a mangled mix with protruding metal parts.
But exacerbating the effects of the horrific crash, the 207 bus caught fire, sharing it with the Yutong bus.
And this is where, the ambulance officer revealed, the 207 bus is suspected to have carried three gallons of petrol on the bus.
“That is not allowed,” he revealed the infraction that left at least 25 bodies burned beyond recognition.
“We don’t know why they do it,” the officer pointed out an infraction which he suggested several drivers are fond of committing.
The ambulance officer said he suspected the Yutong bus driver was sleepy in the 10-hour journey to Kumasi. The bus was carrying foodstuff–tomatoes, pepper- to supply several markets down south.
He believed that if the Yutong bus driver had stopped at the police checkpoint, the dynamics would have been very different.
The incident on the Kintampo road became the third in three months, with the most recent one reported in February 2020.
Kintampo accident file
22 February 2020: Two women and a pregnant mother died on the Kintampo road when the vehicle they were travelling on crashed into a cargo truck carrying logs.
7 January 2020: Four family members died in an accident, involving a Mercedes Benz and a Yutong bus in the Kintampo Municipality. The 65-year-old driver and his newly married wife, son and brother died instantly.
4 November 2019; A two-year-old girl and a man, identified only as Michael, were killed in an accident in the Kintampo South District of the Bono East Region.
13 September 2019: Another gory accident on the Techiman-Kintampo highway at Tuobodom in the Bono East region claimed eight lives.