Eyewitness: Country road tragedy

By Shay Grieve
BBC News website in Kentstown

The school coach ended on its side

The Bus Eireann coach had picked up the secondary school children at a number of schools in Navan and headed homewards in the late afternoon.

The Kentstown road is a country road, lined with trees and surrounded by farming land.

The weather had been mixed, sunshine followed by torrential showers. At 1629 the fire brigade took a call - a school bus had crashed on the road. Two cars had also been involved. Local doctors rushed to the scene. They found a bus full of school children, the bus badly damaged and lying on its side in a ditch.

The walking wounded were taken to a house across the road. After being treated for their wounds they were eventually ferried by ambulance to a number of hospitals.

The road was wet and a few hundred yards back from the scene there was a sign for road works. The road was being repaired, the machine being used to lay new tar was visible close to the crash.

Emergency vehicles

The road had been narrowed to single file traffic to allow for the work to be carried out. Two cars, one silver in colour and the other dark, lay just past the road works. It appeared they had hit head on and the dark coloured car was very badly damaged.

Further back a traffic light was visible on the road side. The bus was travelling in the same direction as one of the cars, it appeared to have swerved to the other side of the road.

A major incident was declared and ambulances, fire brigades and helicopters rushed to the area. The narrow roads were cluttered with emergency vehicles. The whirl of helicopter rotars could be heard for miles around.

Military helicopters sat in a local field. The roads for miles were closed off and police officers directed all traffic away from the scene.

Anxious relatives

At teatime five teenage girls were confirmed dead. They were students at the local convent school. Other children with numerous injuries were taken by ambulance and helicopter to hospitals in Drogheda and Navan. Anxious parents tried to make it to the scene but were advised to attend the hospitals.

There is a sense of numbness in this rural community. Local people and emergency service personnel have finished their task and stand around in small groups reflecting on the tragedy. Heavy lifting equipment is now being moved into place to help lift the bus.

The investigation to piece together what happened on this country road has now started. Men in bright coloured jackets with clip boards have begun their work, the road is being measured and surveyed.