Advertisement
Advertisement

Witnesses saw bus spinning through the air

Villagers tell of haunting scenes of carnage, with a pregnant woman dead and other passengers clinging to life

Witnesses told of their horror as they watched bus 265M plunge off Tuen Mun Road.

Villager Hsu Yu Koon-ping, 60, said: 'The bus was flying in mid-air, front first. It was spinning before it speared into the earth.'

Moments later part of the safety railing smashed a metre-wide hole in the roof of the house in Ting Kau village that she shares with her husband, Hsu Shiu-wah, 71.

Mr Hsu said: 'We were woken by the screech of brakes. We looked out of our bedroom window to see the bus break through the barrier, plunge through the air and smash into the hillside.

'We were very frightened.'

They watched a girl of about nine crawl out of a broken window in the bus, followed by her mother.

Later, they saw the dead - 'many people on stretchers covered with black blankets'.

Pennie Hsu, 25, an off-duty policewoman, and her brother Terrance Hsu, 24, were the first people to reach the bus.

They found a scene of carnage - crumpled wreckage, partly embedded in the hillside, 'one man twisted at the front of the bus', said Ms Hsu.

'A young girl and a lady were crawling out of the wreckage. We ran up ... We could hear the people who were still alive calling for help,' she said.

And they could see, and hear, those dying inside the bus. Mr Hsu saw a man dangling awkwardly. 'He was hanging upside down in the bus and not moving. I could see a child who seemed okay, but he was clearly deep in shell-shock.' Ms Hsu said: 'We helped some people who could walk, we took them to our house.'

Chun King-man, 27, who has lived at Ting Kau for three years, said he heard 'two big bangs'.

'I ran from my home. I could see the bus lying on the slope. I heard many people calling 'help, help, help'.

'The little girl and her mother had crawled out of the bus. The mother was calling for help on her mobile phone. Many of the people were covered in blood.'

He said five people had been hurled from the bus on impact. 'They were scattered in a three-metre radius around the bus. One was dead, four were alive. I could see them lying, not moving. I saw one man crawling out of the bus.'

Mr Chun said: 'I was terrified. I have seen traffic accidents before, but never anything that has killed so many people ... nothing that has caused such great tragedy.'

He says he will be forever haunted by the sight of a pregnant woman dead amid the wreckage.

Chun Chi-keung, 52, saw her too. 'There was a pregnant woman who was dead already. Her belly was very big, she was many months pregnant, it was very, very sad.'

He too heard a big bang. 'I thought it was a thunderstorm. Then I left my house to find the bus had crashed off the road, smashing into the storeroom of my house.'

He said he called to the people inside the bus, who were crying out for help, telling them not to move. 'I told them help was on the way. I was afraid that if they moved, the bus would shake and roll and injure more people.'

Mr Chun said: 'I could see a dead woman lying inside the window of the bus. There were five people lying around the bus, they were covered in blood. There were tens of people covered in blood. And there were bodies with the legs and feet all twisted and broken in funny angles.'

He said rescuers laid out bodies in front of his house while they got survivors out of the wreckage.

'Eight dead people were laid out. I felt really uncomfortable to see so many people die.'

Freda Lau Kan-fung, 40, said she could see people with 'faces covered with blood and others with their heads and bodies wrapped in bandages'.

A 14-year-old girl was shaken by their horrific injuries. 'I could see legs and arms and necks twisted in abnormal angles. They were jutting in different directions.'

Eusemia Lagura, 45, who saw the injured and dead being carried away, said she was struck by the thought that so many of the victims had been happily on the way to work.

'They would have been relaxing in the bus,' she said. 'They would not have known that they were going to die. They would not have known that this was the end.

'I was wondering if they were ready to die.'

Post