Steward tells of lucky escape

Press, 19 August 1981, Page 1

Steward tells of lucky escape

PA Wanganui A steward. Mr Derek Haslam, of Wellington, was one of the many “walking wounded" inclined to disbelieve what had happened as he sat sipping coffee in the Waiouru mess hall last evening. Mr Haslam told how the railcar unit lurched first to the right, then left, then right again as it ploughed off the track.

He was only feet away from the Silver Fern’s other steward. Mr Tom ' Phillips, and escaped with cuts and bruises. •

Mr Phillips was not sc lucky. Trapped in the galley on the left side of the unit, he hung over Mr Haslam in the crumpled wreck, showering him with blood from a gaping wound. “Tom was badly trapped.” Mr Haslam said. “As I battled to extricate him he found he could not bend forward and when we tried to straighten him up, he screamed." Mr Phillips was whisked

away with other badly injured passengers and was thought to have been flown soon afterwards to Palmerston North Hospital by helicopter. The Rev. lan McCleary, a Baptist minister of Lower Hutt, escaped unscathed, w’hile a man seated in front of him was killed.

“It was pretty awful. I was sitting next to a Japanese girl and neither of us was hurt, although the man who had been sitting opposite ended up in the luggage rack. “But then we looked out the window to see someone sticking out from under the train . . . awful. He must have been thrown out when the window shattered. It seems as though those who were thrown out were killed.” r .

Mr McCleary had’ undergone surgery on Monday and was in pain when he took the trip. .He said that after the accident he was pain-free for about three hours, because of the?sliock. , For Tahitian tourists Jran-

Claude and Monique Bachelier the accident was “a bad souvenir” of their New Zealand holiday.

Mr Bachelier said he saw a woman killed. Two Australian tourists, Messrs Gregg Owen and Andrew Carin, both of Sydney, were seated together at the rear of the first carriage. When the railcar began to roll down the bank they clung to each other and the seats of the carriage. Mr Owen said they clung so tightly that they were still in a perfect sitting position when the train stopped moving — but they were upside down.

“We were lucky. Two near us were killed,” he said.

“It was rather gruesome. I saw one body half in, half out of the railcar after it had been cut in half. It looked to me as though the person had been thrown half out of the railcar and then run over. The whole thing was pretty sad."

Mr Carin said he was the first person to clamber out of the railcar after it had come to rest, and with his companion and other ablebodied passengers he helped other passengers to leave the wreckage.

“But I don’t think it was very good — we had to wait so long to be rescued,” he said.

“I was helping people out for about three-quarters of an hour before any help came. It was about an hour before we were rescued.”

Nolan Smith, bf Greytown, aged 14, and his brother, Etonnlley, aged 10, were travelling to Taumarunui by themselves.

< Noland said: “After it happened I couldn’t find Donnlley. I was worried about him. A whole lot of people were on top of me. and I had to Wriggle my,- way through them so I could get but. . “It was good to find he (Donnlley) was all right. I saw one joker get crushed. He was underneath the car-

riage and his legs were sort of sticking out.

“So I covered him all over with pillows so it wouldn’t upset all the others. “So many people were all trying to get out and I didn’t want them to panic.” Nolan’s elbow broke through a window when the train rolled and Donnlley had “sore knees” after- he was thrown to the ground, but neither suffered more than a few minor scrapes and bruises.

Nervouusly chain-smoking as she waited for bus transport on to Auckland was an elderly woman who admitted it might have been fondness for cigarettes that saved her. “I was seated to the back, in a smoking compartment,” she said. “It seems it was the people forward in the nonsmoking areas who were hit worst of all.” What caused the crash? Accounts were varied and confused last evening. One traveller told the Wanganui “Chronicle”: “This much is certain ... the driver was well inside his speed limit.”

A track subsidence? A Silver Fern steward, Mr Dereek Haslam, recalled as

he crawled out of the wreckage that the soil on the bank was loose and came away in handfuls, just like a sponge. “Give the Army some credit,” a Waiouru hotelier said.

“The public at large would just never know the. tremendous job these men do, not just on big accidents like this one but virtually every time we have a spot of bother up the Desert Road. Army vehicles certainly swarmed over the Silver Fern crash, site yesterday.

The last trucks on the highway about 9 p.m. were the short wheelbase canopy units with the big red crosses on the side, quietly bringing out the last crushed bodies.