Buses carrying Chinese tourists veer off New Zealand road in 2 crashes at the same spot. 15 hurt

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Two buses carrying Chinese tourists veered off the same stretch of road in perilous weather conditions on New Zealand's South Island on Thursday, with 15 passengers taken to hospital, two of them seriously hurt.

The buses were traveling in the same direction on a stretch of highway popular with tourists when they slid from the road and overturned, at about the same time and only 100 meters (109 yards) apart, New Zealand's police said in an emailed statement. Temperatures in the area were freezing and others driving on the highway reported heavy fog and black ice on the road at the time.

Their cause was not known, New Zealand officials said. A spokesperson would not confirm the nationality of those on board but the Chinese consulate in Christchurch told The Associated Press by email that the buses were carrying Chinese tourists.

The local ambulance service said 15 people were taken to hospital, two by helicopter in a serious condition. Eight of those hospitalized were moderately hurt and five had minor injuries. Officials did not say how many others were treated at the scene or how many people were on the buses.

No other vehicles were involved in the crashes. The road remained closed several hours later, with no alternate routes available.

Grace Duggin, an Australian tourist, was traveling in a car behind one of the buses and saw it veer off the road, rolling multiple times before landing in a field. Conditions before the crash were made treacherous by slippery black ice, she said, which regularly closes the South Island's tourist highways in winter.

One man pulled bloodied passengers out through a hatch in the roof of the bus, Duggin said.

''It was mostly the little kids who had severe head lacerations," she said. "All the windows were completely smashed out on both sides and the windscreen, so obviously there's been a lot of glass injuries.''

Duggin said the other bus appeared to have veered off the road at the same time, a short distance further along the highway on the same side of the road.

Neither bus appeared to have been involved in the other's crash, she said. The two vehicles appeared identical, though no logo or company name was visible on either.

The country's transport agency had earlier issued a warning about wintry conditions on the road, State Highway 8. The stretch where Thursday's crash happened — between the township of Lake Tekapo and the town of Twizel — had been closed days earlier after another crash on a snowy, icy morning.

Like many of the South Island's tourist highways, the road traverses the pristine mountain and lakefront vistas that draw visitors to New Zealand — but can be dangerous in the Southern Hemisphere winter, especially to travelers unused to winding, slippery roads. Tourists and locals have died on the same stretch before; in April, four were killed — including two Malaysian students studying in New Zealand — in a three-car crash.

In 2019, an American tourist pleaded guilty to driving charges after he drifted onto the wrong side of the road, hitting another car and killing a man who was visiting from Australia.

Elsewhere in the country, tourist buses have plunged from New Zealand's highways — which outside of the main cities are often winding, narrow or mountainous — in deadly crashes before. In one of the worst episodes, a bus flipped in rainy conditions north of Rotorua, on the North Island, in 2019 killing five tourists from China.

In 2008, eight tourists and their driver were killed when their bus hit a logging truck.

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Associated Press writer Ken Moritsugu contributed reporting from Beijing.