Tour bus crash: one of NZ's deadliest crashes involving tourists
Thursday, 5 September 2019
A bus crash that killed five Chinese nationals, including a child, is one of the country's deadliest tourist tragedies in recent decades.
The tour bus spun and rolled in wet weather, around a 'moderate to easy bend' before rolling off the road on State Highway 5 between Tirau and Rotorua.
Of the 27 passengers, two were seriously injured and four sustained moderate injuries.
Others were less injured, with some able to walk away from the scene wrapped in blankets.
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New Zealand's deadliest crashes involving tourists:
The deadliest occurred in 2005, when eight tourists and their NZ driver died after their tour bus collided with a truck laden with timber.
The collision took place in wet conditions on a sweeping bend in Morrinsville. Newspapers reported an 18-year-old Indian girl as the sole survivor.
A decade later, six tourists and a pilot Mitchell Paul Gameren died after a helicopter crashed into an icy crevasse on the Fox Glacier while trying to land. The overseas visitors that died were Brits Andrew Virco, 50, Katharine Walker, 51, Nigel Edwin Charlton, 66, Cynthia Charlton, 70, and Australians Sovannmony Leang, 27, and Josephine Gibson, 29.
There were no survivors.
The same year, in 2015, an American family of four died after their car collided with a logging truck near Tokoroa.
The parents and their adult daughter died in the crash, while their son sustained critical injuries. He was treated in hospital but died a week later.
The victims were Warren Lee, 53, Aesoon Lee, 52, Julia Lee, 20, and Griffin Lee, 17.
In 2010, four tourists were among nine victims of a skydiving pane crash.
The plane carrying them crashed and burst into flames on the Fox Glacier airstrip shortly after takeoff.
Tourists Patrick Byrne, 26, of Ireland; Glenn Bourke, 18, of Australia; Annika Kirsten, 23, of Germany; and Brad Coker, 24, of England died in the collision.
In 1993, four members of a South African family and the driver of a van died in a crash near Meremere. The family's 18 month old was the sole survivor.
Most recently, three Chinese tourists died when their driver swerved to avoid an oncoming car on a narrow single road in Tekapo in March this year.
The driver, Lai Xu, was disqualified from driving for two years and ordered to pay $23,000 to his victims in June.
Five others - his wife and three others - were injured while his mother and wife's parents died at the scene.