A minibus crashed into a ravine on Thursday, August 21, 2014 in the Kinnaur district, a region in India’s Himachal Pradesh in the foothills of the Himalayas. The deadly accident left 23 passengers dead, 16 of which are suspected to have died on impact, with six others dying during the time it took to travel from the crash site to the nearest hospital. At least 20 more people are reporting injuries at this time. The bus was carrying approximately 45 passengers en route to Kalpa from the Sangla Valley when it went off road, falling more than 100 yards before smashing onto the banks of the Baspa River—one of the Satluj River’s tributaries—below. The cause of the crash remains unknown as of this writing.
Most of those who were killed or injured in the crash were locals who resided in the Kinnaur district. Of the injured, nine were taken to Rekong Peo Hospital, and 11 others who sustained critical injuries were flown to the Indira Gandhi Medical College and Hospital in nearby Shimla. Locals who had witnessed the crash took it upon themselves to attempt to help some of the victims of the crash while waiting for rescuers to arrive.
Authorities are having a hard time determining the exact cause of the crash, as the driver of the bus was among the deceased. The road conditions near the site where the bus went off the roadway are said to have been quite poor, possibly owing to recent rains in the area. The region’s government has stated that they will provide relief to the families of the deceased and injured, expressing sorrow over the casualties sustained in the terrible crash.
This is the second deadly crash in the area in less than one month: late in July, a bus accident in Shimla left 21 people dead and several more injured in a crash eerily similar to this one, where the bus is said to have fallen into a gulch. India is said to have the most lethal roadways in the world, with more than 100,000 people dying each year as a result of traffic accidents, 800 of those deaths occurring in Himachal Pradesh alone. Although bad roads are blamed for many of these accidents, reckless driving is another concern, as well as poorly-maintained vehicles.