Twenty-five people died, among them the driver, and 14 were injured when a bus carrying mostly secondary school students went off the mountainous Campanas de Cima route on Fogo Island, Cape Verde, Africa, and fell about 100 feet into a rocky ravine on Saturday, September 5, 2026.
A day trip to Chã das Caldeiras, the settlement that sits inside the volcanic crater dominating the island, had just ended, and the bus was heading home when it crashed at about 9 p.m. local time. Teenagers made up most of the dead. São Filipe Mayor Nuias Silva confirmed the death toll on Saturday.
First accounts estimated about 30 people aboard, while a fuller count gave 38 passengers plus the driver. Reporting from the island put the number carried to São Francisco de Assis Regional Hospital at around 19, and four of those patients were in serious condition. Local media, citing the island’s health authorities, reported that seven bodies were buried immediately because of their condition.
Thirteen people remained hospitalized as of Tuesday, September 8, according to the crisis cabinet.
No transport accident on Cape Verdean soil has been deadlier. The toll surpasses that of the 1999 crash of TACV Flight 5002.
Trip Was Not Organized by Schools
Nearly everyone aboard was a student, yet the outing had not been organized by their schools, a local authority said. The students the driver ferried through the school year were taken on the same outing annually, and he arranged the trip himself, a local authority said, customarily at the end of one school year or before the start of the next.
Two communities, Curral Grande and Ponta Verde, accounted for most of those killed on an island where the population is spread across steep terrain.
The fall threw several people from the bus and left others trapped inside. Rocky, difficult ground at the spot where the vehicle came to rest hampered the rescue and recovery effort.
Rocky Terrain Slowed the Rescue
In a statement, the São Filipe Municipal Council addressed the victims’ families, their classmates, their teachers and the broader educational communities caught up in the loss, declaring its solidarity with all of them. A council team was in the field working alongside the Health Department, the National Police and the Municipal Volunteer Fire Department, the council said.
Jose Maria Neves, Cape Verde’s president, called the crash “a great catastrophe” in a statement. “I offer my condolences to the bereaved families, to the friends of the victims, and to the island of Fogo,” he said.
Prime Minister Francisco Carvalho said at a press conference: “We are talking about the greatest tragedy we have ever had in post-independence Cape Verde.” Of the inquiry, he said: “We want technical experts to provide a certain analysis so we can present conclusions based on specialist data.”
The government declared two days of national mourning. All 25 victims have since been buried, and a mass funeral was held at Sao Lourenco Church in the town of Sao Lourenco, where relatives and residents carried the coffins and 18 of them were displayed together inside the church.
Carvalho also announced the creation of a multidisciplinary emergency response team that will remain on standby for future crises. Officials from the Ministry of Infrastructure would arrive on Fogo Island on Tuesday, September 8, he said, to investigate further the mechanical condition of the bus.
Cause Still Under Investigation
An investigation is open, and authorities have not established an official cause. Early accounts of the moments before the bus went over the edge differed. Outlets at home and abroad described the vehicle as having simply run off the mountain road; other accounts raised a possible tire failure, which is still an early hypothesis rather than a finding.
Rather than settle on a single presumed cause, investigators must answer several questions. Their inquiry covers the reason the bus left the roadway, the mechanical soundness of the vehicle, and the part played by the route’s layout and any roadside barriers in how severe the crash turned out to be. Rocks and terrain can batter a vehicle that leaves a road at a high point as it descends, and that multiplies the force of the impact well beyond that of an ordinary collision.
Cape Verdean authorities launched a safety audit of the Chã das Caldeiras road on Tuesday, September 8. A team from Estradas de Cabo Verde examined the section where the bus left the roadway and is weighing guardrails, new traffic rules and a possible restriction or ban on heavy vehicles such as buses and trucks on certain segments, with exceptions for emergencies.
An Outsized Loss for a Small Nation
Fewer than 600,000 people live in Cape Verde, an archipelago off the coast of Africa, and a crash of this scale therefore registers nationally as well as locally. Fogo ranks as one of the smaller inhabited islands, and two neighboring communities supplied most of the dead.
Figures presented by Interior Minister Paulo Rocha count 5,903 road crashes across the country in 2024. Those crashes killed 39 people, seriously injured 154 and hurt 1,404 less severely. Crashes rose 6.4 percent from 2023, and the death toll increased by two.
International estimates suggest those official tallies understate the problem. A 2023 road-safety profile counted 97 people killed on Cape Verdean roads in 2021, a figure well above the 39 fatalities officially reported for 2020, and it put the 2021 death rate at 16.5 per 100,000 residents.
From Campanas de Cima, 25 people are dead and 14 injured, and investigators have yet to close their inquiry into what sent the bus off the road.
