Saying goodbye

The two bus drivers involved in the crash, 35-year-old Geert Michiels and 52-year-old Paul Van de Velde, both from Aarschot, were buried earlier this week in private family ceremonies. Teacher Raymond Theunis and administrator Veerle Vanheukelom from Lommel and teacher Frank Van Kerckhove and ski instructor Monique Van Bocxlaere from Heverlee, will also be buried in private.

The exact cause of the bus crash on the evening of Tuesday, 13 March, that killed 28 people, including 22 children, remains unclear. At around 21.15, a coach from Flanders carrying sixth-grade schoolchildren (11 to 12 years old), four members of staff and two drivers was involved in a single-vehicle accident in a tunnel on the A9 in Sierre in the Swiss canton of Valais. Twenty-two children and all six adults on board were killed. Twenty-four children were injured, some of them seriously.

At 8.15 the next morning, Belgian prime minister Elio Di Rupo made his first statement, later flying to Switzerland having arranged military transport for the parents of the victims. He was accompanied by Flemish minister-president Kris Peeters and other ministers. Before leaving, the parents were met at Melsbroek air base by the king and queen.

The majority of the fatalities involved children from the school in Lommel, who were seated at the front of the bus, including nine children of Dutch nationality who attended school in the border municipality. Six Dutch children were among the 15 from the class who died.

The government declared a national day of mourning for Friday, and a moment of silence was called for 11.00, honoured across Belgium. The same day, the remains of the dead were repatriated by military aircraft to Belgium.

Cause of crash yet unknown

The bus crashed into the wall in front of a turn-out area inside the tunnel. The cause of the crash is still unconfirmed. A report that the driver had taken his eye off the road to insert a DVD for the children was dismissed by Olivier Elsig, the prosecutor for the Vallais. However some of the surviving children have now said they noticed the DVD screens coming on just before the impact. A team of investigators was due to travel to Flanders this week to interview witnesses.

The schools were taking part in sneeuwklassen, or ski-trips, a tradition for children of the sixth year. The bus carrying the children from Lommel and Heverlee was one of three travelling back to Flanders that evening. As they returned, another party of around 150 children was arriving in Switzerland, the last of the season for St Luc, said Marina Claes, director of the association that organises trips for Flemish schools. There’s still one party due to leave for another resort in Switzerland, and two for resorts in France.

Is the association contemplating any changes in light of the accident? “Of course there are questions and some hesitation on the part of some parents, and at this moment I can say that there have been several individual cases of parents cancelling for their children,” she said. “I think it’s clear in this case that it was an accident, and I don’t see what measures we could introduce to exclude that sort of thing in future.”

Moving on from here

Flanders pools its resources to support families, friends and colleagues of the victims

For the whole school communities in the municipalities of Lommel and Heverlee, Flemish education minister Pascal Smet has sent in its own services and will make more available if required. The Centre for Student Support and Counselling “is working in the two schools, and there will be extra resources in the schools until the end of the year,” a spokesperson said.

Klasse voor leraren, a monthly magazine for teachers in Flanders, has published a brochure to explain to teachers how to deal with grieving children. “If the death affects the whole school, then it’s important that the school as a whole deals with the children, not only the classmates of the deceased or the pupils of the deceased teacher,” it reads. “Make contact with schools in the neighbourhood. Friends of the deceased pupil there might also be experiencing difficulties. The result of a successful grieving process is not forgetting. Something of the sorrow will follow throughout a whole life. But pupils can learn to feel good again.”

Erik Van Vaerenbergh, chairman of the volunteer organisation Missingyou.be, which counsels grieving children, says that “the first and most important thing is to allow those kids space to express their emotions. To give an example, these children can get really angry at the injustice; it’s not fair what happened. If they’re not able to express that anger, it can become a problem later. Each person grieves in his or her own way: Some need to talk, while others absolutely don’t want to talk; they want to be left in peace. So each child has to be approached as an individual. It needs time; there’s no other way to go about it.”

“Parents need to be given the room to take as much time as they need to say goodbye to their child in their own way,” says Christine Langouche, director of the organisation OVOK, for parents who have lost a child. “Sometimes I hear parents saying, ‘if only I’d kept a lock of my child’s hair’. Sometimes we advise them to bury a favourite toy with the dead child, but be sure to keep another favourite items within the family to help later on. These are all small details at the time but are very important later on.”

Brothers and sisters, continues Langouche, “are often forgotten. They often don’t talk much because they see mum and dad so sad that they don’t want to add to it. During the grieving process, you’re just so intensely focussed on the dead child that sometimes months later the surviving siblings come forward to say, ‘we’re here, too’.”

Grandparents, she says, are also often forgotten. “They often had very close ties to the child who is gone,” says Langouche, “so it’s essential that their loss is recognised because they’re not only seeing their own son or daughter grieving, they also have to work through the loss of their own grandchild. So they have two matters to take care of.”