Semana Santa Death Toll: 40
Once again Samana Santa was in the red, as the unofficial death toll for Semana Santa is 41, almost ten more than for the same period last year. What that number means is that an average of five people died a violent death daily during the eight day holiday.

The majority of the deaths occurred in traffic accidents.

The number is the Cruz Roja (Red Cross) estimate from reports of all its operations in the country. The final number could be higher, as it does not take into account the number of deaths in hospital following an accident.

Authorities are concerned because despite the prevention campaign on the roads and the large number of police and rescue workers and the large number of fixed Cruz Roja posts along the areas of the highways with the greatest risks, the numbers of victims was highest in the last several years, when in 2003 47 deaths were recorded during Semana Santa.

Adding to the growing number of deaths are two separate bus accidents that occurred Sunday afternoon, bus jammed with vacationers returning home.

In the first accident occurred in Miramar, en Montes de Oro, Puntarenas, when a bus loaded to the brim with passengers lost control, apparently due to faulty brakes, left the road and fell over a cliff some 50 metres stopping when it hit a tree, killing three and injuring some sixty people, a number seriously.

Seventeen passengers were taken to the Monseñor Sanabria in Puntarernas, nine of which had to be airlifted to San José's hospitals México, Nacional de Niños, Alajuela and San Juan de Dios.

One of the passengers on the bus, Hugo Rodríguez, told reporters that he began to smell the smoking brake pads some 200 metres before the accident, watching the driver frantically trying to brake the bus and drop over the cliff when he couldn't.

The driver of the bus, Melvin Arias Cruz,  was one of the seriously injured and airlifted to hospital.

Meanwhile, at about the same time, in Nicoya, Guanacaste, in La Vuelta de Nambí, between Nicoya and Santa Cruz, an accidend between two buses left 32 people injured.

Some 18 Cruz Roja units were on the scene of the accident, which at first was believed to have been more tragic that it was. Miracuously there were no deaths to report. in that accident.