Crash survivor heard brakes screech as bus sped downhill

Rosalinda Cerna, 50, was supposed to take a van-for-hire home to Toledo city but she got on a Jegans bus thinking it would be a safer ride.

She had no inkling the trip would end up in a major accident.

She survived with a fractured right shoulder.

At the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) where she was confined, Cerna said the Jegans bus driver tried to race alongside a Calvo Bus earlier in the trip when when they passed Minglanilla town to Naga in the east coast. But the driver wasn’t able to catch up.

A few passengers were standing in the center aisle, she recalled.

She said the bus stopped briefly in barangay Balirong passing by the Naga-Uling road.  From there, it picked up speed, she said.

In Toledo City in the west coast, as the bus reached a downhill portion of barangay DAS (Don Andres Soriano), she said she heard a long screech, as the driver stepped on the brakes.

By the time the bus reached the blind curve, she said the driver had lost control and slammed into the concrete fence by the road.

Cerna was sitting in the second to the last row of the bus. She was in Cebu City on Friday visiting her daughter.

Cerna said he had no plan to sue the bus company because it would be too costly.

“Ang importante natabangan lang gyud mi (What’s more important is they have helped us),” she said in Cebuano.

A nother passenger, Ronel Lape was on his way home to Pinamungajan town to spend All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.

The construction worker, who sat in the back of the bus, came out with only bruises in his head.

Like Cerna, Lape told CDN that the driver lost control of the bus when it reached the blind curve of the downhill road.

Lape said he worried about the loss of his cellphone and the small amount of money he earned in his Cebu city job.  He noticed it gone after he was taken to the hospital.  He was due to be discharged within the day. /Carmel Loise Matus, Correspondent