At around 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday, a sleeper bus carrying 22 people from Dak Lak to Hai Duong plunged off a cliff while traveling the La Son – Tuy Loan Expressway through Da Nang in central Vietnam.
At the scene, the bus had collided with and damaged embankments on the side of the road, but there were no skid marks.
A witness said the bus turned over 3-4 times as it fell off, before ending up in a stream at the bottom of the cliff.
The bus was heavily damaged, with broken parts flung everywhere. Except for the driver and the bus assistants, the 19 passengers were mainly people coming back to their hometowns in the north to prepare for the Lunar New Year Festival. The eldest was 65, while the youngest was 9.
Several pieces of the bus stacked on top of each other.
The passengers helped themselves out of the vehicle. Rescuers arrived at the scene after around 30 minutes, and used ropes to transport severely injured people up the hill. All 22 involved in the incident were taken to Da Nang Hospital and two medical centers in Lien Chieu and Hoa Vang districts.
Two people, both over 60, one from Hung Yen and the other from Dak Lak, died in the incident. Da Nang Hospital is treating nine people, with one person in the ICU.
Nguyen Van Sy, 27, a passenger, said the windows and windshields were shattered after the bus tumbled over several times. He and several others escaped the vehicle through the front windshield once it stopped rolling.
A waterfall is located around 20 m from the site of the incident.
The two-lane La Son-Tuy Loan Expressway has been in use since April 2022. The location of the accident is a sharp turn, situated around 40 km from the center of Da Nang.
