Crash site near Nowe Miasto nad Pilica. Photo: PAP/Piotr PolakOn the second day of mourning after yesterday’s crash near Nowe Miasto nad Pilica, family members of those who died are to identify the bodies at Warsaw’s Forensic Medicine Institute, Wednesday morning.
On Tuesday evening spokesman for Radom police, Tadeusz Kaczmarek confirmed that eight of the bodies recovered from the crash had been identified.
In what has been dubbed Poland’s worst road accident in 16 years, a Volkswagen Transporter carrying 18 people crashed head-on with a Volvo lorry in the early hours of Tuesday morning near Nowe Miasto nad Pilica.
16 people travelling in the minivan died on the spot, with two further passengers and the driver of the lorry taken to nearby hospitals after the crash. The two remaining passengers died soon after.
Most of the accident victims were residents of Drzewica and surrounding villages in Opoczno county, Lodz province. All 18 of the deceased were seasonal workers travelling to an orchard for an apple picking job.
The Volkswagen Transporter was not equipped to carry such an amount of passengers. The travellers sat in the back of the minivan on wooden boards supported by tree trunks, not plastic crates as previously reported, and which probably caused the fatalities upon impact with the lorry.
Following the crash, a period of mourning was declared in the Lodz and Mazovian provinces until Thursday 24.00 CET. (jb)
Source: IAR