Gweru River Accident
The Gweru River Accident occurred on 10 January 2021 when a vehicle was swept away when the driver attempted to cross a flooded Gweru River just after Ascot suburb in Gweru. The vehicle was towing a mining compressor when the accident occurred along Matobo Road at around 6 AM. It had four males including the driver and two females on board.
Identity of Victims
The driver of the vehicle was a council employee from the engineering department who reportedly engaged in artisanal mining when not on duty. The second passenger whose body was retrieved from the back seat could not be identified.
Search
On 10 January 2021, a rescue team from Gweru City Council abandoned the search for the vehicle and the passengers as the water levels were too high.
Fortunately, it didn’t rain during the night and the water levels subsided. On 11 January 2021, police, rescue workers from Gweru City Council Fire Brigade, and a private company were at the scene from around 9am and the vehicle could be seen lying on its side on the left side of the river just after the bridge.
Chief fire officer Lyndon Hove led the team in retrieving the bodies, after a two-hour struggle.
A recovery lorry from a local company assisted in pulling the vehicle to the river bank. Two bodies were retrieved. The two were part of the six people who were feared dead after an Isuzu double cab was swept away at the flooded Gweru River Bridge.
The back window of the vehicle had been broken raising speculation that the missing four either swam to safety or drowned.
The Police Sub Aqua Unit was summoned to dive deep into the river to search for the missing people while the two bodies were ferried to Gweru Provincial Hospital awaiting post-mortem.[1]
References
- ↑ Patrick Chitumba, Swept away vehicle found…Two bodies retrieved, search continues for four passengers, The Chronicle, Published: January 12, 2021, Retrieved: January 12, 2021
