Rede Expressos Coach Overturns Near Baleizão in Beja, Killing the Driver and Injuring Seven Passengers, Two of Them Seriously

The driver of a Rede Expressos coach died and seven passengers were injured, two of them seriously, when the coach skidded off the Estrada Nacional 260 (EN260) near Baleizão, in the municipality of Beja, on Friday morning, 30 October, and overturned on the verge. The alarm was raised at 08:35, a source at the Comando Sub-Regional de Emergência e Proteção Civil do Baixo Alentejo (the Baixo Alentejo civil protection command) told Lusa, Lusa reported via Observador.

The coach was running the 07:45 service from Vila Verde de Ficalho, in the municipality of Serpa near the Spanish border, to the Sete Rios coach station in Lisbon, with seven passengers and the driver on board, a Rede Expressos source told Lusa. It had picked up passengers in Vila Verde de Ficalho and Serpa and was due to collect more in Baleizão and Beja, the Beja fire commander said, Lusa reported via Notícias ao Minuto.

What is confirmed so far

• Place: the EN260 (which shares its route with the IP8 here) at kilometre 16.1, in the parish of Baleizão, according to the public occurrence list of the Autoridade Nacional de Emergência e Proteção Civil (ANEPC, the national civil protection authority).
• Casualties: the driver, a 51-year-old man, was killed. The seven passengers, four women and three men (one of them a foreign national) aged 21 to 70, were all taken to the Hospital José Joaquim Fernandes in Beja, a source at the Unidade Local de Saúde do Baixo Alentejo (ULSBA, the local health unit that runs it) told Lusa. Two of them, a man and a woman both aged 70, were seriously injured and went straight into surgery; the commander of the Beja volunteer fire brigade, Pedro Barahona, said both had suffered amputations. They had been trapped under the coach but had already been pulled out by local people when the emergency services arrived, he said.
• Response: at 09:50 the civil protection command counted 63 personnel, 26 vehicles and a helicopter from the fire brigades, the GNR (Guarda Nacional Republicana, the national guard) and INEM (Instituto Nacional de Emergência Médica, the medical emergency service). Barahona later said the helicopter had been stood down, as the injured had gone by ambulance, Lusa reported via Notícias ao Minuto.
• Road: the EN260 was closed in both directions because the emergency vehicles were on the carriageway, Barahona said. No detour had been reported by late morning.

How the figures changed

The first official count was lower. At 09:02 the civil protection command knew of "at least three or four" injured, Lusa reported; by 09:36 it was seven injured, some seriously, and the fire brigade then confirmed that the driver had died at the scene. One outlet briefly reported "at least eight" injured. The count from the fire brigade, the hospital and the civil protection command has since stayed at one dead and seven injured. ANEPC's list still showed the incident as in progress shortly after 11:00.

Cause under investigation

The GNR is on site to investigate the crash, RTP reported. Barahona told Lusa that, on first indications, the driver may have suffered a sudden illness at the wheel, a first assessment that has not been confirmed; no official cause has been given. The authorities have not named the driver, whose body is being taken to the forensic medicine service at Beja hospital.

Beyond confirming the service and the number on board to Lusa, Rede Expressos, the coach operator, had not published a statement by late morning.

Anyone travelling between Serpa and Beja should expect delays on the EN260 and follow GNR instructions on site. The crash came on the first morning of the GNR's All Saints' weekend road operation, which puts extra patrols on the mainland's busiest roads until Sunday; our report on the operation sets out what drivers should expect.