18 victims stuck inside bus after accident rescued in 2-hour effort in Pune

PUNE: Firemen from the city and the PMRDA used cutters to prise open parts of the private luxury bus and rescue 18 victims trapped inside the vehicle that had turned on its side after it was rammed by a truck on the Katraj bypass around 2.15am on Sunday. Five people died and 22 others were injured in the accident.
Local residents from Narhe and Ambegaon rushed to the spot on hearing the loud bang and helped with the rescue operation. As it was dark, people used the torches of their cellphones to carry out rescue work.

City fire brigade chief Devendra Potphode told TOI that after reaching the spot, their teams found that the bus had turned on its side. "We broke the rear wind shield and entered the bus," he added.
They had to use hydraulic tools and other cutters to cut the front and rear sections of the bus to rescue the passengers.
"A six-year-old girl was trapped in such a way that all her hair was between the bus's tin sheet and seat covers. We cut her hair and freed her and moved her to a hospital as she had sustained injuries to her head and her hands," Potphode said.
The truck driver and another passenger in the truck were trapped inside its cabin. "We used cutters to bring them to safety. It took two hours to carry out the rescue," Potphode added.
Two rescue vans were used for the task and four fire tenders also arrived. Oil from the truck's engine had spilled on the road and covered the entire carriageway. The firemen sprinkled mud and then washed the entire stretch to avert any more accidents.
Fire brigade officials, police and local residents rescued over 20 passengers stuck in the bus and the truck.
Senior inspector Vijay Kumbhar of Bharati Vidyapeeth police said, "We had two heavy duty cranes remove the wreckage of the vehicles from the spot after which vehicular movement on the bypass was restored."
Two more accidents on bypass the same night
The Sinhagad road police said the Katraj Dehu Road bypass had witnessed two other accidents before the fatal bus-truck collision in the early hours of Sunday. In one of the earlier accidents, a truck driver was injured.
The police were clearing the vehicular traffic after one of these accidents when the third one (bus-truck collision) took place.
Sinhagad Road police inspector Jayant Rajurkar told TOI: "The first accident took place on the Bhumkar bridge. A truck, heading towards Satara, caught fire and its driver halted in the middle of the road. Another truck hit it from behind. The driver of the truck that hit the stalled vehicle was injured. He was admitted to a hospital."
In another accident, a truck heading towards Mumbai hit three parked vehicles on the service lane near the Swami Narayan temple around 3.30am. "No one was injured ," Rajurkar said. "The truck driver claimed he had applied brakes, but they failed on the slope. He hit a bus, a tempo and a car parked on the service lane," Rajurkar added.
"We were clearing the traffic after this particular accident, when the bus-truck collision took place on the other side, just 300 metres away," he said.