Edith Langa (63) recounted the harrowing bus crash in the Long Tom Pass on the R37 from Lydenburg last Friday afternoon, December 8, which claimed seven lives and injured 52.
She was travelling with her fellow passengers to a church’s choral music festival in Sabie, from Mokopane in Limpopo, just before 17:00, when tragedy struck.
According to Langa, “All of a sudden, there was screaming and the bus was rolling down an embankment. I thought I was not going to make it out alive.”
Despite surviving the accident, Langa is deeply saddened by the loss of some of her longtime friends who were among the seven who had died. “I thanked God for sparing my life. The accident was horrible, and it’s something I don’t wish anyone to go through.”
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She sustained injuries to her neck and some of the muscles in her body.
Another injured passenger, Khumi Khaas, said the accident is something she is trying to forget. She said one minute she was talking to the person next to her and the next thing she knows, the person was dead.
“I have been fellowshipping with some of the deceased for decades, and losing them in one day is very traumatising. The fact that one of them was sitting next to me hurt the most, and I have been trying to forget,” she said.
Lahliwe Mawelela said they were all looking forward to getting to the music festival and going back home together. “All I can remember is the bus moving, and then people were screaming at the top of their voices for help. But there was nothing we could do, as the bus was rolling.
“I must thank all the emergency personnel who managed to retrieve us and take some of us to the hospital; they did a good job,” she said, thankful to have survived.
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The Evangelical Lutheran Church released a statement a few days after the incident with the names of all the deceased: Maredi Nakadi, Masotja Mokgorwana, Dolo Ezekiel, Kgomo Josephine, Mokoka Francinah, Khotsa Martha and Nailana Nurse.
The church’s spokesperson, Emmanuel Mnisi, said all the passengers are people who have been with the church for over 50 years. He said the deceased will be remembered for their dedication to the church and the love they showed to all.
Meanwhile, according to the owner of the bus company, Vuki Chuene, his driver reported to him that the bus had a suffered a flat tyre as they were going downhill, and that he had lost control of it and that it rolled. He said, however, that this was subject to a police investigation and the company’s internal investigation.
Chuene further sent a message of condolences to the deceased’s families and wished a speedy recovery to those who were injured.
A memorial service will be held today at the Mahwelereng Stadium at 12:00, while a mass funeral will be held at the stadium on Saturday at 07:00.
The crash scene:
Emer-G-Med’s Martin Jeffrey said that had it not been for the thick bushes and trees down the steep embankment, the bus would have likely rolled much further than just 15 or 20m.
He said that while seven people were killed, none of the other 52 people had sustained life-threatening injuries, and that many of the patients were ‘walking wounded’.
Jeffrey said when he and the other EMS services arrived at the accident site, an on-scene triage area was established to treat the injured and rush them to nearby hospitals for further treatment. It was all hands on deck with Emer-G-Med, ER24, Netcare911, Midlands EMS, Hi-Tech Medical Services, Africa Safety and the provincial EMS loading and transporting the injured passengers.
SARZA’s Andrew Geldenhuys said the incident was the single largest body recovery the team had done.
“I received a call from Emer-G-Med at 16:40 saying a bus had gone down an embankment. We knew the bus was full of passengers and that it was a mass casualty scene, but we didn’t fully know what to expect when we arrived,” he said.
He said when he and his team arrived, he saw there were multiple ambulance service on-scene and that EMS seemed to have the situation well under control.
“We assisted two patients up the embankment, but there was another that had been been pinned between the bus and the ground. He had extensive damage to his legs.”
Geldenhuys said they worked quickly and carefully to extricate the man and get him up the embankment, where the EMS services were waiting to treat him and rush him to a nearby hospital.
“We assessed then that there were bodies trapped under the bus, which was lying on its side. It seems one of the deceased was already on the roadside. We managed to recover another body, but had to wait for Van Wettens Breakdown Services to lift the bus and pull it up so we could safely retrieve the five other bodies,” he said.
Van Wettens’ Rassie Erasmus, who has been in the breakdown service industry for almost three decades, waited until all the members of SARZA were up from the scene before he and his team attached cables to the bus from the rig and started the methodical process of lifting the bus up the embankment.
Geldenhuys said the team finished the recoveries and left the site at about 01:30 on Saturday morning.
The DCSSL:
Meanwhile, the Mpumalanga MEC for the Department of Community Safety, Security and Liaison, Vusi Shongwe, once again appealed for cautious usage of the roads during this festive season. He said it was deeply disheartening for the province to start the season on such a grim note.
“We are concerned about the number of fatalities that the province has recorded so far from the crashes since last week. We continue to make a clarion call to motorists to be extremely vigilant amid rising traffic volumes. They should be patient and plan their trips accordingly,” said Shongwe.
