Dozens Die in Mexican Truck Crash Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Sun, 25 Apr 1999 by The Associated Press SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico (AP) -- Parents struggled to identify their children Saturday after a truck crash insouthern Mexico killed 45 people returning from a free vaccination program. Twenty-eight children were among those killed when the truck they were riding in plunged off a rural road and tumbled nearly 250 feet into a ravine Friday in the southern state of Chiapas. The bodies were laid out Saturday in the town square of Amatenango de la Frontera, near the Guatemalan border, as relatives began identifying the victims -- including babies ranging in age from 3 months to 1 year. Five men and 12 women were killed along with the children. The bodies lay side-by-side in simple coffins in this tiny border town, as authorities and relatives moved from row torow looking for a familiar face. Later in the day, soldiers buried the victims in the town's cemetery. Officials revised an earlier toll of 46 dead. ``I took my children to be vaccinated, we got the whole community together to get the shots,'' Aquiles Sanchez, a parent seriously injured in the crash, told local media from his hospital bedin the nearby city of Motozintla. There was no immediate information on the fate of his children. Only 11 of the passengers aboard the truck survived, officials said. But there was some hope amid the tragedy: Six of the survivors were children aged between 1 and 14. Teresa Arrevalo, a social worker at the government hospital in Motozintla, said only one was still undergoing surgery. ``The children are responding, some are eating, some are getting visits from family members,'' Arrevalo said. Two survivors have been released from the hospital, and seven were listed in serious or delicate condition. The victims, mostly Indian farmers from the tiny hamlet of Chiquixvil, were making a 3-mile trip in a flatbed truck, acommon form of transport in rural Mexico, to get their children vaccinated against measles and other childhood diseases and to collect government farm-aid checks. The 3-ton truck ran off a gravel road and plunged down the ravine, hurling passengers onto the slopes and trapping six inthe wreckage, state Attorney General Eduardo Montoya Lievano. The truck was overloaded and apparently trying to climb a 42-degree rise in the road when it began sliding backward. While officials said there were indications the driver tried to brake the vehicle, it continued its deadly slide off the road and into the ravine. The driver, Hugo Martin Velazquez, 25, died in the crash. Also unclear was whether the truck had been contracted by the state or federal government to transport the familiesto the government-sponsored vaccination program. While a common form of transport, traffic codes in many Mexican states forbid carrying passengers in open trucks. ``I want to express the sadness that all we Chiapans feel, and say that we will give all the institutional support necessary in these moments,'' said Gov. Roberto Albores Guillen, who flew to the remote scene of the crash by helicopter Saturday. The deaths are the latest in a series of tragedies for this southern state, which has been split by a guerrilla uprising since January 1994. Floods, landslides, massacres and politically motivated violence have taken hundreds of lives in recent years. ___________________________________________________ NUEVO AMANECER PRESS-N.A.P.To know about us visit: http://www.nap.cuhm.mx/nap0.htm (spanish) ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-04.26.99-13:20:18-1038