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Namling flashback more than a decade on

9 March 2010

One of the survivors of Bhutan’s worst road accident tells our reporter Gyembo Namgyel the heartrending story of that fateful day

Bus accident of June 16, 1998, at Namling between Mongar and Bumthang was the worst road accident in Bhutan’s living memory. Out of 72 passen­gers jam-packed in a bus with carrying capacity of half the number, 58 people perished while 13 others survived maimed.

Forty-five-year-old Pema Thinley, a Geographical In­formation System (GIS) tech­nician in the RNR Research Centre in Wengkhar, Mongar, was one of those few survi­vors. He recounts what hap­pened that fateful day when he was supposed to be on a flight to India on a study tour.

“I was returning to Mongar disappointed with the post­ponement of a short study tour to India for which I and a few others were called to Thimphu at a short notice. I boarded the very next bus back to Mongar feeling let down,” said PemaThinley.

The journey until Bumthang was normal. As the bus left Bumthang’s Cham­khar town, it was already crammed. Most of the pas­sengers who boarded the bus from Chamkhar were return­ing home to Mongar after at­tending Petsheling tshechu in Bumthang. At Ura, two more boarded the bus, one of whom was a truelku. “I offered my seat to Geden Truelku, who got down at Sengor along with his attendants,” he said.

Even today, he strongly be­lieves that he survived more than 300 metres crash amid mangled bodies and jagged metal pieces because of the blessings he had received from the truelku when he got down at Sengor and a rimdo his sister had conducted for his well-being a few days ear­lier.

Pema said the accident hap­pened when he was asleep. He fell unconscious. “When I regained my consciousness, it was dark with eerie sound of a waterfall nearby,” he recol­lects. “I thought I was drunk but realized that all I drank was a bottle of beer at Cham­khar many hours back. It was when I realized that the bus had met with an accident.”

Soon, groans of dying and injured passengers became obvious. He said he could move his arms but not his legs. He could feel limp bod­ies all over him, and he tried to push them off, but to no avail. In utter desperation, he punched lifeless bodies to free his broken leg. All the while, he shouted for help, and kept shouting throughout the night. His friends gathered on the road above recognised his voice but no help arrived that night.

Pema Thinley remembers that before he relapsed into a coma, the groans and the wailings were becoming few­er and weaker. He remembers seeing a retired soldier and his daughter separated by two rows of seats. Both sur­vived the initial impact. The daughter was calling out to her father for help. All night, the father kept reassuring his daughter that he was coming to help her while he could not move even an inch because of broken legs wedged be­tween the seats. “Just before I passed out, the cry for help stopped. When I regained my consciousness after two days, I was in hospital,” he recalls.

At the hospital, doctors found out that all his vital or­gans were failing. It was one of his friends who pinned his hopes on the slim chance of survival. “Had it not been for him, I would have died,” he said with a grimace.

However, after regain­ing consciousness, he made a quick recovery. He spent four months in hospital dur­ing which time he underwent 13 major and minor opera­tions for fractured jaws with six broken teeth and multiple fracture on one leg.

After he fully recovered, he was asked to swap his job from research to GIS where he was expected to do more desk works. However, his new job demanded more physical activities, requiring him to walk for days. “I have walked to almost all the gewogs in the east. It is challenging and satisfying,” he said, studying a topo-sheet map to update the latest land use data in the dzongkhags.

But, he said that the big­gest tragedy was the death of his father 10 days after the accident apparently from the shock. He learnt about the death only after he walked out of the hospital after full recovery. “This is what hurts me the most even today,” he said.

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Comments

One Response to “Namling flashback more than a decade on”

  1. sonam lhundrup on March 14th, 2010 7:29 pm

    THAT WAS ACTUALLY A VERY DISHEARTENING INCIDENT EVER HAPPENED IN OUR COUNTRY. LONG LIVE FOR THOSE WHO ARE STILL ALIVE AND WE PRAY FOR THOSE WHO WENT FOR HEAVENLY BODY.

    WE FELT REALLY SORRY FOR THOSE 72 PASSENGERS.

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