Three Rega air ambulances on 12 March 2012, the first time in the company's history that all three have flown at once. Rega is a Swiss non-profit foundation that in its own words "comes to the aid of people in distress, providing swift, professional medical assistance by air"
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Rega, the Swiss air emergency service, flew three girls home to Belgium today from the Chuv University hospitals in Lausanne, where they were in critical condition until Saturday for one and Monday for the two others.
The three were the last of the children injured in the 13 March Sierre bus crash to be flown home. The crash killed 28 people and injured another 24.
Rega flew home the children and numerous members of their famillies in one of its three ambulance jets. They were flown in a Challenger CL-604 on two flights from Payerne in canton Vaud to Brussels.
Rega carried, in total, 18 children and their family members back to Belgium on nine separate flights.
The company notes in a statement issued by Valais police that “On 16 March – the day of the first repatriations – Rega deployed its entire air ambulance fleet. This was the first time in the history of Swiss Air-Rescue that all three of its jets were in operation at the same time.”
CHUV university hospitals in Lausanne
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – The three girls at the Chuv university hospitals in Lausanne who have been in critical condition since the bus crash in Sierre a week ago are now out of danger, doctors said Tuesday 20 March. The hospital says in a statement that it will now be in touch with Belgian authorities about repatriating the girls in the near future.
One girl came out of her induced coma late last week and the two others have now also come out of their comas and have been able to speak to their parents. The two who suffered concussions and multiple fractures are showing “favourable signs” of neurological recovery and the girl who suffered spinal injuries is showing some movement in her toes and fingers, a positive sign, says the hospital.
All three, it says, are now at the start of a long rehabilitation road.
The other injured children from the 13 March bus crash in a tunnel in Sierre were all flown back to Belgium by the weekend.
The funerals of the children who died will be held Thursday. A contingent of Swiss officials from the police, medical and fire departments as well as city and cantonal officials, all of whom were heavily involved in the rescue operations, are flying to Belgium today to accompany the families for the next two days.
Update 8 February 09:00 LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A 43-year-old man has died and a 44-year-old woman is in critical condition at the Hug university hospitals in Geneva after what appears to have been a carbon monoxide leak at a chalet in Rossinière, near Château-d’Oex. The man was visiting the area during the ski season, say police. A downstairs neighbour woman, age 58, went up to the first floor apartment to say she smelled something suspicious shortly after noon Tuesday 7 February, but when she discovered the two inanimate bodies she phoned police. She was also briefly hospitalized in the area.
Police are investigating the cause of the accident.
Later in the day, at 20:00, firefighters were called to route de la Frasse in Rossinière where a chalet had caught fire. No one was injured by the blaze, in an unoccupied chalet with two apartments, but the building was entirely destroyed.
Car rolled 150 metres down steep slope, leaving passenger in critical condition
SION, SWITZERLAND – A 22-year-old passenger in a car that was parked in front of a nightclub in Montana-Vermala, part of the Crans-Montana resort area, is in critical condition after the car rolled down a steep slope.
The 24-year-old woman who was in the driver’s seat managed to free herself and get help.
Police are investigating why and how the parked car, for unknown reasons, began to roll, then went off the road and was only stopped some 150 metres below the road by a tree.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - One of the two Swiss women critically injured in the blast a week earlier in Marrakesh, Morocco, has died, Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey announced late Friday afternoon 7 May. She expressed her sadness and distress at the “brutal disappearance” of those killed by the “senseless and ugly act of violence”, the bomb that exploded at a cafe popular with tourists, in the town centre 28 April.
The two men who were with the Ticino woman and another female companion, were killed in the explosion. The other woman remains hospitalized.
Police in Marrakesh have arrested three suspects.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The 29-year-old gunman who 4 October shot a 15-year-old girl, Marina, in Petit-Lancy, leaving her in critical condition and in an artificial coma more than a week after the incident, had been fired 10 days earlier by the security agency Securitas, an investigation by the TSR public television show Infrarouge has discovered.
The agency says that the man was fired during his trial period for, reportedly, unsatisfactory work and behaviour not in line with their requirements, but his job did not involve being armed, nor did he have a gun license for his job. He appears to have acquired a personal gun license and to have obtained the gun from a dealer in Geneva.
The gunman also injured a young man when the bullet that lodged in Marina first passed through the youth’s cheek. The two were part of a group of youths who jostled the man, who had been drinking heavily, when they tried to insist that he leave the area near a school, after a dispute. He then went to his car, picked up a gun and took aim.
Once he realized the girl had fallen, he stayed at the scene of the accident and called police on his mobile phone to report the shooting.
Background, GenevaLunch
New bear park in Bern, Switzerland
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A 25-year-old man who was injured when he climbed the wall of the new bear park in Bern, then slipped, is in stable condition after he was attacked by one of the bears. Finn, the nearly 4-year-old male who injured him, was wounded by gunfire from a policeman who was trying to save the young man, and the bear is in serious condition, according to Bernd Schildger, the head of Dählhölzli, the animal park of which the bear pit is a part. If Finn survives, which is not yet clear, he will not be put down, says Schildger.
Police have not been able to determine why the man, who is mentally handicapped, decided to climb the wall, where he crouched for a moment before falling four metres into the bears’ den.
A Dutch man, 38, drove his car into the Queen’s Day parade in east Amsterdam Thursday 30 April killing 5 people and wounding 12 others, say Dutch officials. The car missed his intended target, the bus carrying the queen and royal family, and crashed into a stone monument several meters away. The driver was injured in the crash and has been detained. The government cancelled the remaining official activities for the day. Financial Times
