Four tour bus crash victims flown to O'ahu
By Hugh Clark
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
HILO, Hawai'i — The four most seriously injured Japanese tourists hospitalized after a Friday afternoon tour bus crash on the Big Island were taken by air ambulance to the Queen's Medical Center yesterday.
Associated Press
A 76-year-old man from Hyogo prefecture was reported in critical condition at Queen's. A 47-year-old Hokkaido man, his 45-year-old wife, and a 34-year-old woman from Miyagi prefecture were upgraded to guarded condition.
Paramedics were able to free the injured driver from the tour bus despite extensive damage to the front end.
Four others remained at Hilo Medical Center, including driver Sean Benito, 29, the first person among the 19 injured to be identified; a 54-year-old man from Tochigi prefecture; and a 58-year-old woman from Kyoto prefecture. Their condition was described as "satisfactory" by a hospital spokesman.
The tourists' hometowns were released in Tokyo by JTB Corp., Japan's largest travel agency.
Eighteen Japanese visitors and Benito were injured when a Jack's Tours minibus ran off Volcano Highway and into a drainage ditch.
The incident remains under investigation.
The tour group was on its way to Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park just after noon when a car in front of the minibus tried to turn left, police said. The tour driver swerved to avoid hitting the car and ran off the roadway.
Benito was treated for multiple injuries, including a broken right leg. He was removed from the wreckage by fire paramedics, who said they pulled the jammed driver's seat backward, though they initially had called for a wrecker to rip the vehicle apart.
Carol Miyashiro, the president of the Hilo-based tour company, said the passengers who were treated and released returned to Honolulu yesterday. Queen's referred further inquiries to the Tokyo office of Japan Travel Bureau.
The 26-year-old woman driving the car was not injured.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
