Tourists home after bus crash in Shandong
Updated: 2011-02-08 07:20
By Ming Yeung(HK Edition)
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Sixteen remainder of a group of holidaymakers who injured on a tour to Shandong province returned to Hong Kong on Monday night and early Tuesday morning.
Wan Sau-fong, a 50-year-old Wing On Travel group tour member who suffered serious chest injuries in the road accident, is in stable condition after surgery.
Wing On Travel arranged an air ambulance to bring Wan and her husband, who was also in the group, back on Monday evening.
The travel agency also chartered a Drangonair flight to bring back the remaining 14 slightly injured members of the tour, five males and nine females, at 1 am Tuesday.
They were to be taken to hospital for further treatment upon arrival.
The incident happened at about 3 pm on Saturday as the group, which had just landed in Qingdao, was traveling on the bus to the city of Weifang, known as the world capital of kites.
In total 30 Hong Kong tourists and one Hong Kong tour guide were on the bus.
The 175-kilometer drive normally takes about 2.5 hours. But near the midway point, the bus crashed into a pit between two road sections on a highway, injuring all 30 tour members and the Hong Kong tour guide ranging in age from 6 to 70.
Eleven members of the five-day group tour stayed in a Qingdao hospital after they were injured in the collision.
Accompanied by a senior doctor from an insurance company, 14 group members and the tour guide returned to Hong Kong on Sunday night. Among them, 11 went directly home. Three other members of the group and the guide needed hospital treatment.
One injured tour member, surnamed Pang, complained the bus was going too fast.
"The bus was weaving across the road. We urged the driver to slow down but he did not listen. Before long, the accident happened," she said.
The National Tourism Administration has carried out an investigation into the cause of crash. The host travel agency, Qingdao Hai Tian International Travel Service, said the driver, who was not injured, had more than 10 years' driving experience. He was neither drunk nor speeding at the time.
"(The accident) was probably a result of the severe wind in that area. Large vehicles such as trucks running by in the opposite lane would also create strong wind, hence the car would be affected," said Jiang Wei, manager of the agency.
All tour members had purchased insurance with the maximum compensation of HK$1 million. Wing On Travel promised to help them apply for compensation and refunded all HK$5,000 tour fees.
Principal Immigration Officer at the Office of the Government of the HKSAR in Beijing William Fung Pak-ho visited the injured tourists in hospital in Qingdao on Sunday.
China Daily
(HK Edition 02/08/2011 page1)