“It was going at 20 per hour.” The hypothesis of an illness of the driver. A man in serious condition.
Lying on the right side in a narrow passage between the wall and the wooden cubicles of the bathroom The Undine, the white and orange bus of the ATC looks gigantic. Yet the first witnesses who look out on the wall of the beach (“after hearing a noise like a collapse”, they say) find it hard to see it, wrapped as it is by a cloud of dust. They are the stones and dirt that he dragged with him as he fell for five or six meters after breaking through the rusty railing along the road that climbs from Marina Grande towards the center of Capri.
The vehicle was full
The bus was full. Which is actually not gigantic at all but quite small, because Capri is made up of narrow streets and a normal-sized bus couldn’t go anywhere. But this was full not only because it has just fourteen seats: also because the tourists who wanted to go up from the port to the Piazzetta found the gates of the funicular closed, stopped due to a breakdown, and they all poured into the bus terminal. At 11.30 the driver Emanuele Melillo left for the last ride of his life with the vehicle already loaded, and other passengers collected them at the first stops. There were twenty-three of them when, at the level of the beach with the white and blue striped sign, something happened. Something unexpected and incredible: the bus stopped going straight. He pulled to the right, it is still unclear whether because out of control or due to an inexplicable maneuver by the driver. Then without braking or slowing down, he climbed onto the pavement, uprooted the railing and flew down.
“He was moving his head in a strange way”
Those who say they have seen swear that it traveled at no more than twenty per hour, which is the usual speed along that stretch. A British tourist who was on board said he saw the driver “move his head in a strange way just before the accident”, but he doesn’t know why. The bus crashed touching the ground with the front, and the impact killed Melillo, unless something had already happened to him before, because that loss of control of the vehicle can only be explained by a sudden and unmanageable illness.
The risk of a worse tragedy
The other passengers can say they were lucky: they are all injured, even one seriously, but that flight could have cost the lives of more than one. And yesterday was also the lucky day for those who were on the solarium of the beach or were close to the cabins: a different trajectory in the fall and the bus would have overwhelmed everything and everyone. And if instead of having crashed ten minutes later at that moment, it could have overwhelmed a colony of children who go to the free beach every day and use that passage to reach it.
Rescue helicopters
On board there were French, Lebanese, Roman tourists, there were people from the island and there were also two children. Transporting them all to the hospital was not easy, but the activation of the rescue was immediate. A team of doctors left by helicopter to give support to Capilupi’s colleagues, but it soon became clear that the only health facility on the island could not cope with an emergency of that size. So the helicopters took off to accompany the wounded to Naples. The two children were taken to the Santobono, the pediatric center: one has several bruises but nothing more, the other has scattered fractures and trauma, but is not considered to be in serious or worrying conditions. Thirteen other passengers on the bus were transported to the Ospedale del Mare, while eight, after being medicated, refused hospitalization. At four in the afternoon the last injured was transferred, and while Capri had already resumed its usual summer life, the technicians of the scientific police remained around the bus.
July 23, 2021 (change July 23, 2021 | 07:24 am)
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