A British woman was killed when a tourist bus crashed on a remote scenic highway in New Zealand.
The 62-year old passenger was one of 17 overseas tourists on the coach tour down the west coast of the South Island. A second person suffered serious injuries.
Amy Lewis, a 23-year-old Welsh university student, was sitting next to the woman before the crash yesterday.
Her father, David Lewis, of Ammanford, south Wales, spoke to his upset daughter after the accident.
He said the woman had stood up to move to the front of the bus, in preparation for getting off at the next stop, when the accident happened.
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“Apparently the road was wet and the coach slipped down the bank and turned over four times and there were no seat belts,” he told the BBC website.
“When I spoke to Amy this morning she was very upset ... But she’s lucky to have escaped with what sounds like just a bit of bruising.”
The coach, operated by Stray Travel Ltd, crashed on a state highway at Charleston, south of Westport.
Senior sergeant Geoff Scott said police were investigating and had interviewed the 36-year old driver.
The bus rolled down a bank, stopping against a tree about 20 metres below the road. Six other passengers were transported to hospital, including one who was airlifted to the provincial town of Greymouth for treatment.
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Westport chief fire officer Pat O’Dea told a New Zealand paper that part of the road appeared to have collapsed under the bus.
“We had to smash windows and cut seats out to get to the injured woman,” he said. “She was conscious and in a lot of pain.”
Stray Travel market their tours to backpackers as “further off the beaten track”, promoting their trips as more adventurous than other tour operators.
The coach would have taken its 17 passengers to the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers, before continuing down to Queenstown, a tourist hotspot.
There have been other accidents involving tourist coaches in New Zealand’s West Coast region.
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A Kiwi Experience bus carrying 25 people crashed into a concrete bridge near the Charleston in October 1996, injuring seven. And in 1999, 15 passengers were injured when their tour bus overturned south of Hokitika.
Last year, a bus carrying 44 passengers plunged 40m down a bank south of Franz Josef glacier. Two people were taken to hospital.
The family of the deceased woman, who had been living in Spain, have asked police to not identify her.