The north Queensland highway where a bus crash left three people dead and two critically injured has been condemned as a “goat track” and an accident black spot.
Police say road conditions will form part of the investigation into the cause of the crash, which occurred on the Bruce Highway around 11am on Sunday.
A Greyhound bus carrying 33 people collided with a four-wheel drive towing a caravan about 8 kilometres north of Bowen. All the fatalities and injured passengers were onboard the bus.
LNP Member for Burdekin Dale Last said on Monday the head-on crash occurred on a section of the highway that “is breaking up”.
“It’s full of potholes. It’s not a very safe section of highway at all,” he said.
“It is nothing more than a goat track. That’s what the locals call it.”
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Whitsunday Regional Council Mayor Ry Collins said he was satisfied with the response of emergency responders on “a challenging stretch of road”.
“It’s probably one of the sections of the Bruce Highway that we do often see accidents occurring,” he said.
“It’s got fairly narrow shoulders on the road and there are some sections there that if you don’t have your wits about you, it is easy to veer off or veer into the other lane if you’re not fully focused on what you’re doing.”
Queensland Police Superintendent Graeme Paine said on Monday the crash occurred on “open highway” and that “road conditions certainly form a major part of the investigation”.
“An incident of this nature is very complex, so we want to go through that holistic investigation before we really move towards looking at exactly why and how it’s occurred,” Superintendent Paine said.
“The impact that had occurred, it pushed the bus across to the railway line — hence we had the closure of the railway line at the time.”
He said the Bruce Highway had since reopened. Queensland Rail said on Monday the local rail line remained closed.
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Impacts felt ‘right throughout the community’
The four-wheel drive was travelling south and the bus was driving north when the collision occurred at about 11am in a 100kph zone on the Bruce Highway.
Three bus passengers died — a woman in her 30s, a woman in her 20s and a 56-year-old Townsville woman.
Paramedics assessed 27 people at the scene.
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Townsville Hospital and Health Service (THHS) said seven patients — five men and two women — were transported to Townsville University Hospital for treatment.
Two women and a man were discharged from the hospital early on Sunday evening.
Townsville University Hospital acting chief medical officer Dr Jason Yates confirmed on Monday four men were still being treated in the hospital — two of them, aged 23 and 24, remain in a critical condition in intensive care.
Dr Yates said two men other men, aged 27 and 51, were stable.
He said the hospital had initially mobilised to respond to a mass casualty event.
“Our teams worked really hard, we were able to mobilise additional medical, surgical, nursing, allied health and social work staff who all came in on a long weekend to do their thing,” he said.
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Describing the collision as “very, very confronting”, Superintendent Paine said support would be provided to those impacted by Sunday’s events.
“If anyone needs any help or needs any assistance trying to deal with an incident that is this significant, please reach out,” he said.
“You can reach out through any local providers or you can reach out through any of the emergency services — we will connect you with referral services to try and assist you in dealing with it.
“This is a very significant incident and the impacts from this will be felt right throughout the community, right across the state and possibly across the nation as well.”
Mr Last condemned the amount of state and federal money allocated to improving the Bruce Highway, saying “it wouldn’t fix the potholes”.
“We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars [that] are required to upgrade that highway,” he said.
“It’s long overdue for a major upgrade. We’re not just talking that particular section. The entire length of the Bruce Highway is in serious need of a massive injection of funds.”
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