Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Two of the four Swiss ski team coaches who were involved in a car accident in Sweden Wednesday remain in hospital in stable condition, in Umea, Sweden. Curdin Fasser is in an induced coma after suffering head injuries with a slight hemorrhage and a broken left femur as well as lung problems. Steve Locher has a fractured vertebrae and pelvis, but the fracture do not involve nerve damage. The two others travelling with them suffered minor injuries and have returned to Switzerland. Few details are available about the accident.
Number of deaths in highrise fire in China put at 53; four arrested
A 15-year-old building in a poor neighbourhood in New Delhi, India, collapsed late Monday 15 November, killing 66 people and injuring at least 70 (Times of India reports 80 injured) of the 200 who are believed to have been living there. Authorities are blaming water damage to the foundation, caused by unusually heavy monsoons earlier this year, reports CNN. The building owner, Amrit Singh, has fled with his family and is being sought by police, say Indian media.
A highrise fire that killed 53 in China Monday has resulted in the arrests of four people on charges related to using unlicensed welders, according to Xinhua. Scores more were injured, of the 440 people who lived in the building, which was being renovated.
Update 22:25 Bure, Jura (GenevaLunch) – Sixteen soldiers were injured Tuesday afternoon 9 November near the military training base in Bure, Jura, near Basel. Six of them are in serious condition but their lives are not in danger, the federal military office says. The accident involved four Piranha tanks that collided for reasons that are not yet clear. Further details are not yet available, but Rega rescue helicopters have been on the site. A recruit died in the same area in 2007 in an accident involving a tank and others were seriously injured in another accident in 2008.
An investigation into the accident has been opened to determine the cause: the soldiers, including recruits, were not involved in a military exercise at the time: the tanks were moving from one area to another.
Last three cars of the Glacier Express that crashed 23 July 2010
Sion, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The 23 July 2010 accident on one of Switzerland’s most popular tourist attractions, the Glacier Express, was due entirely to the driver having an inexplicable blackout, the federal public transport specialist who has overseen the investigation told Sonntags Blick magazine.
There was no pressure on him to accelerate too soon to make up lost time, nor were there technical problems with the train or the rail line. The 34-year-old driver told his employer, the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn line, that he had a blackout at the moment he accelerated from 35 to 56 kph, against company regulations.
A Japanese tourist died when the train derailed in the Goms valley, and 42 people were injured.
Background story, GenevaLunch, 24 July 2010
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A 51-year-old man died shortly after being hit by a train at the station in Wipkingen, on the outskirts of Zurich. He had just stepped off the train and fell onto the tracks for unknown reasons, then was hit by the moving train. Emergency services arrived at the scene promptly but were unable to save him. Police are looking for witnesses to the accident.
A Vevey woman was luckier last week when she was hit by a train after falling at the Vevey station, surviving the accident but sustaining serious injuries. Swiss newspaper 20 Minutes carries a story 2 November saying that she was taken to the Chuv (university hospitals) where a leg was amputated, but no one contacted her husband, despite the woman having a cell phone and identity papers on her. Her husband told the newspaper that he only learned the next day, nearly 24 hours later, why his wife had not returned home.
Rail traffic was disrupted on the Vevey-Geneva line Thursday, following the accident
Vevey, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A 55-year-old Vevey woman suffered serious injuries to her legs when she tried to catch a train leaving the station in Vevey around 14:30 Thursday. The train was an Interregio, heading for Geneva Airport. The woman’s legs were reportedly caught between the rail car and the quay when she fell and the train doors closed. An investigation into the accident has been open.
Traffic on the line was delayed for an hour and a half.
A serious accident involving a teenager who had just graduated from La Chataigneraie (International School of Geneva) in 2008, following an evening out with friends, made headlines at the time, but the Vevey woman is the latest of some 20 victims of “imprudent” behaviour by rail travellers every year in Switzerland, according to the CFF. The rail company works with schools throughout the country in an annual campaign aimed at teenagers to educate them to dangers of playing around trains, railyards and the need for basic precautions around trains.
Ed. note: the youth, from the Nyon area, sustained serious injuries, but survived the accident.
Truck veers off A9 near Martigny, car flips off A1 in rush hour near Rolle
Spectacular police chase for thieves of BMW, 40 cigarette cartons on A9
Rainbow next to the A9: police caution that drivers need to remember to slow down when dry weather is followed by showers
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – “Drivers need to remember to leave more distance and to reduce their speed when the roads are wet,” cautions Vaud police spokesman Philippe Jaten, in the wake of a series of accidents in the region this week. “And in particular to make sure their seat belts are fastened,” he adds. Jaten says it is difficult to say, looking at a short time, if the number of accidents is higher, but “we’ve seen some spectacular ones.”
Three serious accidents occurred in 36 hours on the A9, in Vaud and Valais, the most recent at 14:30 Tuesday at Charrat near Martigny. A truck veered off the road for unknown reasons, as the driver headed from Sion to Martigny. He had to be cut from his vehicle and was taken to hospital in Sion. Traffic was reduced to two lanes after the accident.
Slow down, leave space on rainy roads
Vaud’s rain-pelted roads this morning likely played a role in a one-car accident on the A1 autoroute at rush hour, between Aubonne and Rolle, heading towards Geneva.
Nine people were hit by lightning as they stood on a boardwalk waiting to see the geyser Old Faithful erupt, at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, in the US. Only one was hospitalized and the others were treated at a park clinic. A similar incident occurred in the same place in 2005 but park officials say the area does not get more lightning strikes than elsewhere in the park. It is, however, more crowded. The park expects to have some 3 million visitors in 2010.
Links to other sites: BBC, KBZK, Yellowstone Park
Cyclist and biker near the University of Lausanne: both need license plates for insurance coverage
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss government decided Tuesday that cyclists will need bicycle licenses for 2010, so prepare to pay CHF5-10 by 1 June for your new bicycle license.
Anyone caught riding a bike without a license is subject to a CHF40 fine. The license covers riders for responsabilité civile (RC), or third party insurance, in case of an accident, for up to CHF2 million francs. Ninety-percent of the population is already covered by RC insurance, but for varying amounts.
Parliament has been debating lifting the license fee, sometimes referred to as a tax, with the centre and right parties arguing that administrative costs outstrip the revenue.
The Federal Council decided that since Parliament has not yet taken a vote on the issue, and the 2009 licenses are valid only until 31 May, the 2010 tax must now be assessed. It points out that the cost of a bicycle accident can often be very high. If, for example, an accident victim is out of work for some time due to injuries, the compensation claims can be expensive.
Preventing deaths and injuries on the roads
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Motorcyclists being stopped by the police are a sight more frequent than usual this week in Geneva, with the city’s police running a safety campaign 17-21 May, called “PréDiRe Motocyclistes”.
It is part of the larger BPU (Swiss Safety Council) national preventive campaign to cut the number of bikers’ deaths and injuries from accidents. Geneva police point out that the risk of very serious injury is 20 times higher for motorcyclists than for people traveling in cars. And while statistics are showing a drop in the number of injuries and deaths from road accidents overall, the figures have not improved for motorcycle accidents.
Motorcyclists in Geneva were involved in 783 accidents in 2009: 13.9 percent of the total number of accidents in the canton during the year. They were 27.3 percent of the fatalities, however, six of the 22 deaths from road accidents.
Human error is responsible for most motorcycle accidents, so the police campaign focuses on raising bikers’ awareness of preventive measures they can take, the risks of speed, and how to help other drivers on the road behave more responsibly towards motorcycles.
Police in Bangkok, Thailand shot rubber bullets into a convoy of red-shirt protestors Wednesday. A crowd fought back with stones , with the melee reportedly killing one soldier, who was shot in the head, although it is unclear exactly what happened. A number of people were injured, according to the Bangkok Post, which says the confrontation took place near the National Memorial, close to Don Muaeng airport, on Vibhavadi Rangsit Road.
Links to other sites: Al-jazeera, Reuters
Franky, slow down - Swiss road safety campaign
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Road Cross Foundation has gathered enough signatures for a popular vote to register their initiative that would ban repeat speeders from Swiss roads. They now have until 27 October 2010 to gather 100,000 signatures to put the initiative on the ballot. Road Cross helps victims of road accidents and their families, but it is also politically active in trying to improve preventive measures and to reduce the number of deaths and injuries on Swiss roads.
The number of fatalities has been falling in recent years but 348 people died in road accidents in 2009.
Link to the federal Road Safety Fund, which sponsors the Franky Slow Down advertising campaign
A1 Gland-Rolle accident: one seriously injured; Epalinges, Gland and Gingins deaths
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Three people have died and one is in serious condition following four separate accidents in Vaud since Tuesday. A woman in her seventies died following an accident in Gingins Saturday morning. In another accident early Sunday a 20-year-old man was airlifted to the Chuv university hospitals in serious condition after he lost control of his car on the A1 autoroute between Gland and Rolle, heading in the direction of Lausanne.
The Gingins accident occurred when the woman failed to see a vehicle coming from her right.
Louis Majesty at sea (photo: Louis Cruise)
A Louis Cruise ship with 1,350 passengers and nearly 600 crew on board, the Louis Majesty, was hit by what the company has called “rogue waves” of up to eight metres, off the northeast coast of Spain. Two people were killed and six injured, with windows broken in the saloon and water taken on board. The ship has pulled into Barcelona, but will later continue its voyage to Genoa, Italy. The captain says there were winds up to 100kph in the area.
Links to other sites: BBC, El Pais (Spa), Louis Cruise
Finn the bear getting antibiotics. He and his intruder are both recovering 25 November.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The 25-year-old man mauled by Finn, a four-year-old bear at Bern’s new bear park, has told authorities he was trying to retrieve a plastic bag, according to Swissinfo. The mentally handicapped man has lived at a home in the town of Koeniz for some years and has been allowed to spend Saturdays walking around Bern on his own, as he has not been considered to be a danger to himself or others. The man sustained serious but not life-threatening injuries.
Finn, who attacked the man when he entered the bear’s enclosed area, was shot by a policeman, but the park announced Wednesday 25 November that Finn is doing better, although another day is required to see if he will need surgery:
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.
African roads are the world's worst, for numbers of accidents (image: WHO, click on image to view larger)
Geneva / Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Roads kill 1.3 million people every year – some 3,000 people a day – and the United Nations estimates that the number will rise by 60 percent in the next few years. Half of those who die are pedetsrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. Switzerland’s transport minister, Moritz Leuenberger, told the first ministerial level world conference on road safety, which opened in Moscow Thursday 19 November, that deaths and injuries can be reduced if safety regulations are increased and enforced. He pointed out that Switzerland has reduced its road traffic deaths more than fourfold since 1971 despite a large increase in traffic during that time.
Leuenberger, who presided over one of three key discussions at the United Nations WHO conference, says that safety education campaigns are essential, but they can’t hope to compete with James Bond style advertising on the part of the automobile industry.
The latest in a string of attacks in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province that have targeted military, police and intelligence services took place early Friday 13 November in Peshawar, where a gunfire was followed by a bomb blast at the Inter-Services Intelligence’s provincial headquarters. Ten people died, at least 60 are wounded and several are believed to be buried under the rubble of the building, according to government officials. In another attack in the province’s Bannu District a suicide bomber drove into a police station and killed six people, injured 23.
Lara Gut, skier, out with injuries for much of the 2009-2010 season
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Swiss skier Lara Gut, age 18 and the surprise hit of the 2008-09 ski season, was successfully operated on at the Ile hospital in Bern, but she will not be able to ski for at least three months, her team manager has announced. Gut suffered injuries in a major crash during training in September. The surgery is designed to provide maximum movement in the hip and she is now starting four weeks of physical therapy.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss television TSR (Fre) late Thursday carried an update which raises more questions concerning the much-publicized story of a Saudi tourist who was badly injured and then robbed in Geneva, appearing to give credence to initial police reports that the man had not been randomly attacked, but had fallen. The report notes that the man had spent several thousand francs in a rue du Rhone discotheque in the centre of Geneva during the evening, was witnessed by several people to be drunk and aggressive, and he had possibly been involved in a fight.
Sion, Valais (Le Nouvelliste/ats, Fre) – A group of seven French people touring on snowshoes near the Cleuson dam lake, where they walked from Siviez, were caught Wednesday 11 February by an avalanche at 13:20.
