'It was like being in a tumble dryer': Survivor describes terror of Turoa bus smash

Tuesday, 2 October 2018

A survivor of the Tūroa bus crash describes what happened.

Imagine hurtling down a mountain road on a bus with no brakes. That's the terrifying scenario that confronted passengers on Mt Ruapehu. Tony Wall investigates the background to a fatal crash and what happens now.

River Price was staring out the window, daydreaming, when she realised something was badly wrong.

The 24-year-old Hobbiton guide had just spent a pleasant couple of hours with her family on Turoa skifield on Saturday, July 28, her first visit.

Visibility was poor, so she built a snowman while her aunt and uncle sledded and her cousins skied and snowboarded.

At around 2pm, they decided to return to Ohakune and went looking for their bus.

River Price is nervous around buses after her horror experience on Mt Ruapehu.

They'd bought tickets from Ruapehu Alpine Lifts (RAL), the company which runs the Whakapapa and Turoa ski areas. It had last season decided to get into the public transport game, to the annoyance of some local operators who felt RAL had used its monopoly status to undercut them.

That morning, Price had been surprised when she saw their transport.

'I'm pretty health and safety cautious, so one of the things I was surprised about - it was an old bus and they were letting people stand in the aisles.

'Going up the mountain I was like 'oh wow, if something were to happen these people are gonna be injured'.'

The same thought occurred when another bus, a 1994 Mitsubishi Fuso two-wheel drive, arrived to take them back down.

'It looked like one of those really old school buses you got on when you were five or six, way back in the day.'

Driver Terry fought to control the bus as it careened down Mt Ruapehu. Here he is shown driving another bus.

The driver, a Korean who goes by the name Terry, took their tickets and Price found a seat mid-bus on the right-hand side, her uncle and aunt in front of her.

Somewhere behind Price was 11-year-old Hannah Francis, her father Matthew and step-brother Joshua.

Price thinks about five or six people out of the 31 on board were standing with their ski gear.

The bus dropped below the snowline on Ohakune Mountain Rd and Price was taking in the beech forest views when people behind her started yelling.

'I was hearing some strange mechanical noises … it was like a metal on metal kind of sound, and smelling a bit of smoke.

'Then people started to panic, started yelling at the driver … 'what's happening?'

'My family were freaking out. My uncle turns around and says 'we've got no brakes'.

'I was like 'oh'. I'm not the kind of person who freaks out externally, I just kind of shut down at that point.'

People began panicking, Price says, several moving towards the back. Some were screaming, others yelling at Terry.

'People…were like 'just pull over here or pull the handbrake' …he was saying 'I'm trying, I'm trying' and then he just stopped talking, he just did what he had to do I suppose.'

As the bus gathered speed on a relatively straight stretch of road, one passenger decided to take matters into his own hands.

'This guy who was sitting across from us to our left … he opened up the emergency door … and just jumped out, just gone.

'That was pretty terrifying and at that point I was like 'oh my God we're going to die'.'

Ahead, Price could see a sharp S-bend over a bridge.

'We saw the corner coming, I knew … this is where we're gonna crash.'

Someone yelled out for people to put on their ski helmets.

Somehow, Terry managed to get the bus through the S-bend. Price thinks he deliberately clipped a guard rail so the bus would stay on the road rather than roll down the hill.

As the bus rolled, Price says, everything went black.

The bus came to rest on its side at the 9km mark on the Ohakune Mountain Rd.

'It all happened really quickly. I remember going from my seat … to landing half way out the bus with the road in front of me where the windscreen was supposed to be, everyone had just piled on top of me.

'It kind of feels like you're in a dryer with lots of clothes, just tumbling around, things poking and prodding you.'

Hannah Francis, 11, died from injuries sustained in the crash.

Price crawled on to the road and noticed Terry was lying still - he was conscious, but had a head injury.

The injured are tended to after the crash, which claimed the life of 11-year-old Hannah Francis.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialled 111, handing the phone to another motorist who'd arrived because she wasn't sure where she was.

All around her people were injured. Some passengers, including one of her relatives, were taken by helicopter to hospital.

Some say driver 'Terry' saved lives by the way he handled the situation.

Matthew Francis broke his scapula and several ribs and Joshua broke his clavicle and suffered spinal fractures.

Hannah, a pupil at Glen Eden Intermediate in Auckland, died of her injuries. 'Our hearts are broken and will never be the same,' her family said in a statement two days later.

Terry spent several weeks recovering from his injuries and recently returned to work, marshalling cars in the car park at Turoa.

He is a popular member of RAL staff and is understood to have been driving buses since the 2017 season.

Two buses at RAL's Ohakune yard are likely to be sold in the wake of the smash.

John Dempsey, whose Dempsey Buses has been providing transport on the mountain for 30 years, says Terry did a 'marvellous job' of getting the bus across the bridge.

'If it had of gone over [the side of] that bridge there would have been 30 people dead. He almost got it around the [final] corner but it hit the bank.'

Police are still investigating the accident and have given no indication if charges will be laid.

Stuff has learned that RAL's insurance company has also commissioned private firm Transport Specifications to carry out an investigation.

One of RAL's buses is being kept at a yard in National Park.

The firm has sought copies of photographs of the bus' console area from media. Managing director Mike Brown wouldn't comment on the investigation.

RAL took its buses off the road after the crash and several are stored at yards around the district.

The bus that crashed had failed nine Certificate of Fitness (COF) inspections from when it was imported from Japan in 2004 until 2016, but sources say failures can be issued for relatively minor things like lack of signage.

The bus had a current COF.

Ross Copland, RAL's chief executive, refused to be interviewed but said in a statement the company has decided to dispose of any passenger transport vehicles in its fleet older than 10 years.

The fleet operated under RAL's transport service licence at the time of the accident had an average age of almost 14 years, he says.

Five buses will be 'disposed of'.

Copland says RAL has worked with a group of alpine industry transport operators to develop an Alpine Vehicle Specification.

It has bought six brand new 4WD buses which are likely to be used for staff transport and public shuttle services 'once we determine how we will deliver the service in 2019 and beyond'.

Other transport operators say RAL should have consulted more closely with them before starting its service.

The company, a public benefit entity which pays no tax, announced last season it was starting a free shuttle service for chairlift ticket holders, supposedly to reduce congestion on the mountain.

RAL used some of its own buses which it had previously used to ferry staff to the skifields, and also contracted other operators to handle the overflow.

'It stopped our mountain transport business really,' Dempsey says. 'Our identity had gone because we were under RAL, all our drivers had to wear their uniforms, our buses had to have their brand.'

The free service was reported to have cost RAL $850,000 - this year it started charging $6 for the return journey, rivals complaining they still couldn't compete.

They were furious when it emerged that RAL was working with the Ruapehu District Council to put a case to the New Zealand Transport Agency for $500,000 funding for what it said was a public transport service.

* First Union slams slack bus maintenance standards

* Bus in fatal skifield crash had a history of failed inspections**

One of the buses operated on Mt Ruapehu had broken seats.

Richard Faire, owner of My Kiwi Adventure in National Park village, said in a submission to the council that RAL's free service was anti-competitive and arguably in breach of the Commerce Act.

He said local businesses had not been given the chance to voice their concerns when RAL put forward its business case and it was misleading to call it a public transport service.

'In reality it has been designed to get more people up the mountain to spend more with RAL at the expense of other businesses,' he wrote.

Faire has put his business up for sale, although he says this has nothing to do with RAL.

Terry Steven of Roam Aotearoa says after this season he will stop putting on buses from Whakapapa village to the skifield, partly because of the uncertainty created by RAL's entry into the market.

The NZTA says it's reviewing the status of RAL's transport service licence in the wake of the crash and will consider its funding application separately.

Copland says last winter 85,000 people were moved on RAL's buses, reducing congestion, pollution and giving people not confident to drive on mountain roads access to the Tongariro National Park.

The park's management plan requires that a public transport service be developed to reduce congestion and provide a sustainable alternative to private vehicles, he says.

As for complaints that RAL has been anti-competitive, Copland says the company has used local contractors at both ski areas and those not working with the company have continued as before, doing more 'customised' services such as hotel pick-ups.

Copland refused to comment on the condition of the buses RAL was operating or its maintenance regime, and ignored questions about why people were allowed to stand.

Several people came forward after the smash concerned about the state of the buses, and pictures emerged of one with broken seats.

Former RAL driver Lucy Conway, who used to ferry staff to the skifields before she quit because of concerns about the safety of the vehicles, told media the exhaust brakes and handbrakes often didn't work and she didn't believe they were up to COF standard.

Copland told Newshub at the time of the crash the buses underwent daily checks and regular scheduled maintenance.

It's understood the buses were no different to others used by transport operators in the district in terms of their age and mileage, and they'd been inspected by the police's commercial vehicle safety team.

A former senior member of that team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, says in his experience, transport operators will often do little to vehicles between six-month COF checks.

'These brakes, depending on the driver and how much the brakes are used … may well need an adjustment after a month or two. Brakes need to be continuously monitored and checked.'

River Price was surprised people were allowed to stand in the bus with their ski gear.

Operators can be issued with fines if their vehicles are found to be dangerous or not up to COF standard.

'Their operator licences can be in jeopardy, their transport service licence can be removed - there's all sorts of powers that the system has,' the source says.

After the crash, and others soon after in Taranaki and Manawatū also involving Mitsubishi Fusos, Transport Minister Phil Twyford announced an investigation into bus safety in New Zealand.

He has asked the Ministry of Transport and the NZTA to look at whether COF testing has been implemented with 'sufficient rigour' and if there were any common elements to the incidents.

Road safety campaigner Clive Matthew-Wilson, author of The Dog and Lemon Guide, says the inquiry will be meaningless if it doesn't translate into a firm plan to upgrade the safety of the entire bus fleet.

The bus industry follows 1950s standards when it comes to safety, he says.

'Can you imagine travelling in a car without seatbelts? Of course not. Yet it's normal for buses to carry passengers who are totally unrestrained,' he says.

Most buses also don't have anti-skid braking and electronic stability control, which can reduce the chance of rollover accidents by about 50 per cent, he says.

Matthew-Wilson is also critical of the standard of maintenance on some buses.

'The age of the bus is not really a big issue. They're generally built solidly and they're designed to run for millions of kilometres.

'However, in some bus companies, there is clearly substandard maintenance on their fleet. How are they able to get away with this?

'If the government fails to act promptly and effectively, I predict we're going to see a lot more of these preventable tragedies.'

Price says she was nervous around buses after the crash but the ones used at Hobbiton are modern and she doubts something similar could happen.

'I think there could have been better health and safety measures placed in those buses, especially when you're taking passengers up and down the mountain, in winter conditions.

'And maybe not have people stand in the aisles. If there were seatbelts in our bus it could have helped prevent a few injuries.'

She says the fact the brakes failed on her bus is concerning.

'I don't know if it was because of age or wasn't maintained very well - it does raise a red flag.'