Teens among death plunge toll
All passengers hurt or killed in Japan crash
NAGANO: Everybody on board a packed ski tour bus which crashed yesterday morning in central Japan were killed or injured in the country’s worst road accident in decades.
The tour bus carrying 41 people bound for a ski resort veered off a road and rolled over in the town of Karuizawa in the central Japanese prefecture of Nagano around 2am.
At least nine men and five women died, and most of the injured were teenagers and people in their early 20s, according to local police and firefighters.
The two drivers on the bus — 65-yearold Hiroshi Tsuchiya, who was driving at the time, and 57-year-old Keizo Katsuhara — were among the dead, according to the police and the bus operator, ESP.
Keyth Tour, the travel agency that arranged the trip, said the passengers were aged 18 to 38.
Tokyo Metropolitan University said five of its students were on board and four of them have been confirmed injured, although their injuries were not life-threatening.
It is still checking on the condition of the fifth student.
A 19-year-old female university student who went on the tour with a friend to snowboard said she was asleep when she felt the bus sway and heard passengers scream before she was thrown out of the vehicle.
She sustained minor injuries to her neck and shoulders.
“I still cannot get hold of my friend who was sitting beside me,” she said.
Passengers with relatively light injuries were seen shaking from shock in the winter temperatures as they waited to be rescued alongside those who were seriously injured and bleeding, according to a local rescuer.
The injured were transported to hospitals from the accident site on National Route 18, some 2km south of Karuizawa station.
The bus was en route to a ski resort in northern Nagano Prefecture after leaving Tokyo on Thursday night.
The road was not frozen at the time of the accident, and no clear brake marks have been found, the police said.
The transport ministry set up an accident headquarters and conducted a special audit of the bus operator while requesting an accident investigation board to look into the case.
The Tokyo Labour Bureau separately searched the offices of ESP in Tokyo’s suburban city of Hamura and of Keyth Tour in central Tokyo for possible labour law violations.
On Wednesday, ESP was slapped with an administrative disposition by transport authorities to suspend operations of one of the seven vehicles it owns for 20 days after failing to have its drivers undergo health checkups among other problematic practices, according to transport ministry sources.
ESP director Takato Yamamoto apologised to the families of the passengers and said he will accept responsibility and whatever dispositions are given over the case.
While the bus crashed on a road not included in its initially planned route, Mr Yamamoto said drivers could decide not to take highways and take a different route to adjust arrival times.
Keyth Tour President Mankichi Fukuda, 38, apologised for the accident and said his company is putting a priority on contacting the families of the passengers.
“We have been following the law [in managing tour safety],” he said, adding he believes there was no safety flaw.
The bus, which was carrying a full load of passengers, strayed on to the wrong side of the road and rolled over the guard rail. The vehicle sustained heavy damage and many passengers were trapped underneath, police said.
One of the female passengers made an emergency call just after the accident, according to the police.
The accident occurred at a time when the transport ministry had tightened safety measures for operators of highway buses following a series of fatal accidents linked to overwork by bus drivers.
The measures included limiting a driver’s nighttime traveling distance to 400km, thus requiring two drivers in longer distance travel as in the latest case.
The accident is the most deadly to occur since the police started keeping detailed records in 1990, although police officials said there were several other bus accidents with a large death toll in earlier years, including one in which a ski tour bus plunged into a river in Nagano prefecture in January 1985, killing 25 people.