Karuma wreckage still holds bodies

A number of relatives of passengers still missing have stayed in Karuma since Friday By Anthony Mugeere in Karuma The heat from the scorching sun is intense but everybody is chilled. The men stand mute, with their arms folded across their chests. The women wear an empty stare as the divers grope for the body of one of the victims of last Thursday's Karuma bus crash. It is hanging through the rear window of the wreckage. It is 1.15 p.m on Sunday. A number of passengers who were aboard the Contour Bus 974 UAM are still unaccounted for. The 48-hour wait for the crane from the Ministry of Works has just ended. Two cranes arrived Saturday night and the police, army and ministry of works engineers are now trying to get the wreckage out of the river. Peter Irana, one of the police divers, is lowered into the river by the crane. He goes down with one of the cables attached to the crane. He is firmly held by long ropes. Irana ties the cable to the wreckage through the last window. He is gently lifted from the river. He sighs with great relief on landing on the bridge tarmac. "I saw two bodies inside the wreckage. But they are squeezed by the shattered seats," he gasps. The crane now starts to pull the wreckage. First attempt, it is unmovable. Two, three more attempts. Alas! The front part of the wreckage is being held by a rock just under the bridge. Several other attempts are made to pull it to both sides of the bridge using a pulley system. It is all in vain. The crane operators pant for breath. They have run out of ideas. "We may have to wait for a stronger crane. And that might be after New Year's day," whispers one of the engineers to his colleague. But the grief stricken relatives of the missing persons are anxious to find out whether the bodies of their loved ones are either trapped in the wreckage or have floated down the river by the fast moving waters. The anxiety is written all over their faces. They constantly bend over the bridge to check on the progress of the attempt to remove the wreckage. "The information we received in Kampala was that my brother was on the ill-fated bus. But he is still missing which means he is trapped in that wreckage," said a woman, breaking into tears. Everybody bends over to have another look at the wreckage. Two maroon cushions from the bus seats float down the river. They have been plucked out of the wreckage by the gushing waters. Large pieces of cloth are also churned northwards by the waterfalls. "There was something like the body of a woman in a pink and white kitenge dress the other day. But it is no longer there. It could have been carried away by the water at night," says a Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF) soldier, who has been guarding the bridge since Thursday. A middle-aged man arrives at the bridge holding a black polythene bag. He bends over the bridge to look at the wreckage. He identifies the body that had been trapped at the rear of the wreckage as that of his younger brother. "Oh God that is my brother Michael Adrapi. He was a student of Jaikol SS in Arua. He was 22," he says, sobbing. Adrapi's body has been hanging through the broken rear window since Friday morning. The divers' attempts to pull it out using ropes had failed. The skin is now peeling off. The only noticeable thing is the black pair of jeans he was wearing. A number of people whose loved ones are still missing have stayed in Karuma since Friday. They are angry that no senior Government official has visited the scene of the accident ever since the bus plunged into the river. Not even the brief stop-over by the Gulu LC5 chairman, Lt. Col. Walter Ochora, can stop them from venting their anger at the authorities. "The politicians are just thinking about the forthcoming elections while people are rotting. It is useless for them to put condolence messages in newspapers when our people are floating to Sudan," charges an elderly man, walking towards Karuma trading centre. There appears to be no hope of removing the wreckage from the river. The mourning now shifts to the trading centre. People stand in small groups discussing the tragedy. "But how did all 60 people survive?" one man asks. No one can volunteer an answer. The same question has been asked by whoever has seen the wreckage. A woman wearing a white kanga over a red gomesi walks towards Hajji Moses Balimwoyo, the Regional Police Commander(RPC), who is overseeing the operation. She is accompanied by a middle-aged man who pulls a coloured photograph out of his pocket. It is for his missing brother. "So, Joseph Kagimu is also one of the people who are missing," Balimwoyo announces. There is total silence. The silence is quickly broken by reports that a floating body had been recovered eight miles to the north of the bridge. A police highway patrol vehicle is quickly deployed. It returns with the body of an unidentified boy. Another police highway patrol vehicle has just returned from Kiryandongo hospital. It has delivered another body of a boy believed to be between 10 and 12 years. "We will never know the actual number of people who died in this crash," says the RPC. "It could be possible that other bodies have already been carried away by the waters." Elly Anguyo is a technician/driver at the UNHCR Aru office in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has, together with Famba, a medical worker at the same office stayed in Karuma for two nights awaiting to see whether the body of one of their fellow staff will be recovered. "The body of Micheline Ngabani, our former workmate, is still missing. She was on leave with her husband Matesa Kila who is also our workmate. They were travelling to Kampala on the bus and it was only Kila who survived," he explains. So only four bodies had been retrieved from the river by Sunday evening. Efforts to remove more bodies appear to have hit a dead end. The rescue team seems to have run out of ideas. The survivors say the accident was caused by over-speeding and the bus' poor mechanical condition. "The braking system was faulty and was repaired at Pakwach. But the driver insisted that we would get to Kampala safely yet he was over-speeding," said Moses Sekre, who sustained cuts on his right arm. Others say the bus knocked dead four sheep as they crossed the road at Nyaravur, between Nebbi and Packwach town. "I do not remember exactly what happened but I think the steering rod could have broken before the bus crashed into the bridge," says another survivor who only identifies himself as John. Karuma residents, however, feel that the state of the bridge might also have been another cause of the accident. "The guard rails are very weak and the bridge is narrow. Government should build a modern two-way bridge similar to that at Pakwach," says Ali Risigala, secretary for information for Karuma Village. Over 50 survivors, including the driver of the bus, were admitted to Atapara hospital, 13 kilometres from Karuma. At least 47 of them were discharged while four who sustained minor injuries were transferred to Gulu Regional hospital. "The survivors we received did not have serious injuries and I cannot give you all the details," said a nurse at the hospital. All the four survivors who were admitted to Kiryandongo hospital had been discharged by Saturday evening. The RPC insists that about 10 people are missing. But it could be higher since even the exact number of passengers who were aboard the bus at the time of the accident is not known. And we shall never know the number of bodies trapped in the wreckage until it is removed. Ends