Cautious search for bridge victims

CASTELO DE PAIVA, Portugal -- Fast-flowing currents are hampering Portuguese divers' attempts to examine objects they think may be sunken vehicles holding 60 bodies from a bridge collapse.

A navy team located the metal objects by sonar on Tuesday, two days after a bus and several cars plunged into the Douro River near Castelo De Paiva.

Divers intend to fasten themselves to safety cables suspended from a dredger. "It's going to be a very tricky and dangerous operation," said Navy officer Augusto Ezequiel.

The objects detected -- one measuring some 12 metres (40 feet) long -- are lying in 15 metres of water in the middle of the river, which is around 200 metres wide at the spot where the bridge collapsed.

GALLERY Portugal's bridge disaster

Officials say that until divers can check the find there could be no certainty that the sonar echoes had really located the cars and the bus.

"It is still just a hypothesis," Navy Commander-in-Chief Nuno Vieira Matias said.

The first step was to put in place a secure platform from which divers could operate -- vital to ensure their safety in the murky, fast-flowing waters. To try to calm the current, authorities intend to close an upstream dam for two hours.

Officials estimate that 67 people were killed in Sunday's accident, but remain unsure of the exact toll.

There was no passenger list of the bus and as many as four vehicles may also have fallen into the water.

Two days after the road accident, the worst of its kind in Europe in more than a decade, only the body of a 65-year-old woman had been pulled from the river.

More than 300 emergency workers have been combing river banks near the accident scene. So far, they have only found a bus seat 17 kilometres (10 miles) downstream from the 116-year-old bridge, increasing concerns that the bodies may have been swept away.

Officials said they would consider using a string a net downstream to catch any floating bodies.

Meanwhile, the scale of the disaster has stunned Portugal and the government has declared two days of national mourning.

Residents in Castelo De Paiva remain frustrated by the lack of progress in finding the bodies of relatives and friends who were returning on the double-decker bus from a day trip.

The government has accepted blame for the accident, admitting that it failed to repair the bridge's weakened structure. Jorge Coelho, the Public Works Minister, resigned following the disaster.

"The impact on this community has been like a terrible bomb," President Jorge Sampaio said on Tuesday after attending the funeral of the only victim so far recovered.

Prime Minister Antonio Guterres has named Employment Minister Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues, one of his minority government's most popular ministers, to replace Coelho.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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March 7, 2001
Lisbon accepts bridge deaths blame
March 6, 2001
Bridge deaths pressure on ministers
March 5, 2001
Search goes on for bridge victims
Six die in Portugal floods

Portugal Civil Defence
Portuguese Presidency

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