A few minutes passed after 9 in the morning when fatality broke into kilometer 63.5 of the southern highway that fateful monday July 6, 1998. An articulated bus TITSAwhich covered the line 111 and that it circulated in a northerly direction, collided with a truck that remained parked on the shoulder with problems in the stability of its load. Given the dimensions of the vehicle, a part invaded the right lane of the expressway, which would be fatal.
The driver of the bus, in which fifty passengers were traveling, could not avoid the collision because a van that preceded him prevented him from seeing the truck and a car that was passing at that moment on the left frustrated any maneuver to avoid the impact. DIARIO DE AVISOS told its readers then.
The bus, which was traveling at 100 kilometers per hour, the speed limit allowed at that time, took the truck ahead and both vehicles fell down a drop of a couple of meters to the service road that runs parallel to the highway and leads to to the Costa del Silencio and Guaza. Six bus passengers died and 30 were injured, being evacuated to the Hospital de La Candelaria and the Las Américas and San Eugenio clinics and Hospiten Rambla.
25 years later, the South does not forget the fatality that met the line 111 of TITSA nor those who lost their lives in the terrible accident: citizens of Spanish nationality, natives of Tenerife, María del Pilar Álamo Rodríguez (42 years old). , María de los Ángeles Herrera González (57), Faustino Jorge Díaz Sales (34), Ana Luisa Rivero Álvarez (23), Isidro Expósito Delgado (37) and the Swiss citizen Johan Josef Langenauer (62). The shocking image of the six corpses lined up and covered with sheets next to the wrecked bus went around the world and was on the front page of this newspaper.
Some of the occupants of the articulated public transport vehicle had to be rescued from the iron mass by firefighters from San Miguel de Abona, whose park is very close to the accident site. One of the passengers was ejected due to the brutal impact. A large rescue operation was mobilized, with the deployment of ambulances, security forces, firefighters and 061 helicopters. The manager of the TITSA company assured that the bus was traveling at a permitted speed and confirmed that the vehicle had passed its last technical review favorably. . In addition, he pointed out that the driver, who was unharmed, was of the “maximum confidence” and had accumulated 25 years of seniority in his position.
Relatives of the victims endured a long wait until the official confirmation of the identity of the deceased, and the DIARIO DE AVISOS chronicle stressed that there were moments of tension at the doors of the funeral homes due to the slowness in the process of analyzing the fingerprints. fingerprints, which delayed burials. The information signed by the editor Luz Belinda Giraldo reflected the discomfort of the husband of one of the victims: “Despite the fact that I identified my wife, they tell me that until tomorrow morning they cannot tell us anything, it must be that the cabinet of ID does not work at night, not even in cases of tragedies like this.”
A resident of Granadilla de Abona lamented, in statements to this newspaper, that “many of these people have had to spend all night watching over their dead in the street. Normally, one gets used to the idea of the death of a family member little by little while the wake takes place next to the coffin, but this has not been the case.
The accident opened a debate in Tenerife on the conditions of public land transport and the safety of its users and employees, but above all it left a deep wound in the south of the Island. Today, 25 years later, the region has not forgotten the misfortune who went out to meet line 111 that damn July 6, 1998.
