Pregnant woman among the dead
Published 12:00a.m. 5th September 2008
Updated 9:18a.m. 5th September 2008
Three people, including a pregnant woman, were killed when three turcks and a car crashed at Kybong. Photo: Courtesy, WIN television.
Police have revealed that a woman killed in a crash involving a car and three trucks on the Bruce Highway at Kybong yesterday was seven months pregnant.
Police said the unborn child’s death brought the accident’s toll to four.
The Bruce Highway was finally opened at about 12.40am (AEST) today, 12 hours after the crash.
A Ford Falcon sedan northbound on the Bruce Highway at Kybong, just south of Gympie, collided with a southbound truck and burst into flames about 12.50pm yesterday, police said.
The prime mover of a southbound logging truck and a northbound B-double with a load of steel girders then both collided with the first truck.
The pregnant 31-year-old woman was driving the sedan. Both she and her 29-year-old male passenger died at the scene.
The 44-year-old driver of the first truck died after he was thrown from his vehicle.
The other two truck drivers were taken to Gympie Hospital for treatment for minor injuries.
The Forensic Crash Unit is continuing their investigations into the cause of the crash.
Wreckage strewn more than 100 metres
It was like a bomb had exploded on the Bruce Highway.
Debris was strewn more than 100 metres across the wet highway at Kybong, north of Cooroy.
Three trucks and a sedan collided in the fiery accident in which three people, all feared to be from Gympie, died as well as an unborn child..
Late yesterday, police investigators were trying to put together a sickening puzzle, but it will take them days to put together.
> Main Roads probe fatality horror
Seven hours after the crash, which happened just past Coles Creek Road just before 1pm, investigators were still at a loss to explain what each of the vehicles were doing in the moments before the carnage.
It is not known what role the heavy rain played.
What they know is the driver of a Pantec truck carrying plywood and the two occupants of a sedan died instantly in the crash.
The drivers of the other two trucks – one a semi-trailer carrying a load of logs, and the other carrying two 15-tonne steel shafts destined for the mines – were also injured in the crash.
Their injuries were not thought to be life threatening last night. Both were taken to Gympie General Hospital and were in a stable condition.
The B-double transporting the shafts came to rest on its side next to the north bound lane, its cabin destroyed by one of the 15-tonne columns.
The log truck came to rest next to the southbound lane, its load strewn over the highway.
The truck drivers’ injuries may heal, but it may take longer for them to come to terms with what they saw in the final seconds before impact and what they were greeted with afterwards.
The Pantech’s cabin was flattened in the crash and resulting fire.
Its driver was killed, his body thrown from the cabin and found about 30 metres away from his vehicle.
All that was left of the sedan – a Ford Falcon, which was believed to be carrying the other two people killed – was its front wheels. Its scorched remains were half the size of a normal sedan.
Firefighters used foam to extinguish the blaze and when the fire was out, hardened emergency service personnel found themselves having to look away.
There were witnesses to the crash, but police sent them home because the scene was too traumatising.
More than 40 trucks were stopped on either side of the crash and the road was silent, other than the fall of rain.
Many of the truck drivers didn’t seem to mind the rain, though. They were more concerned about the drivers in the crash ... if they knew the deceased ... if it was one of their mates who was injured.
“This is our worst nightmare,” one said.
“You know it could happen, you wait for it to happen, but you never want it to happen. This is a tragedy. These were just hard working men and so many lives have just been changed forever.”
The highway was closed until just after 8pm as forensic crash investigators did their best to establish what may have happened, while emergency services and tow truck operators cleaned the hundreds of pieces of wreckage from the road and surrounding area.
It was a bad day on Sunshine Coast roads with more than 17 crashes before 1pm.
Drivers abandoned their vehicles in the ditches and culverts they had slid into, while police, paramedics and firefighters were called from one smash to another as motorists struggled to drive to the conditions.
With the wet weather expected to continue today, emergency services are pleading with drivers to take care and slow down.
They have seen enough carnage already.
> 'Bloody and gruesome' day on Coast roads
> Get the weather forecast here
> Check traffic conditions on our webcams
Recent Comments
We are all guilty of it , driving longer distances and driving more frequently in our lives makes us become more complacent when driving , and relaxes our concern for the reality of how dangerous and deadly our vehicles can be. Unfortunately , it's always too late when reality kicks back in. Do be careful and do be aware of what's going on around you.
There is a responsibility of governments, national and state, to develop safe roads and driving environments and with vehicle traffic increasing to twenty fold ten to fifteen years ago has failed in their duty. Fuel excise and taxes must not be classified as consolidated revenue all must be directed at road reconstruction and improved land transport infrastructure.
We need to place our federal and state politicians on notice to rethink expenditure, maybe inland waterways and land transport infrastructure needs to be the responsibility of the national government.
We need to remove all matters of national responsibility from the narrow-minded state government inwards looking syndrome.
Accidents are designed to happen where a national highway with a speed limit of 100k has such appalling design, such as intersections on to 2 lane sections of the highway that don't have those 2 lanes widened in any way to accommodate the intersections.
Getting on and off that bloody section of road is simply fraught with danger.
For decades now, political dills have presided over railway systems in Australia being degraded to the extent that we see such a huge number of heavy trucks on our public highways and the underlying cut throat road transport system that creates massive problems for operators stuck with enormous loans to pay for their equipment.
Well sod the economy of it all, put a 70k speed limit on this section of negligent highway until the politicians can get it right!!
Get off your fat pay packets and get on with the job.
How many lives need to be lost before something is done?
From witness reports, the two people killed in the car were doing nothing wrong. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and when you are hit by a truck at 200kph, there is no hope at all.
At least it was a quick death.
There are just far too many lives at risk on our roads yet nothing seems to be done about them to fix them up to prevent more tragedy.
Please visit www.gopetition.com and search noosa for our petition to encourage mainroads to do something about our terribly maintained roads up here. Something needs to be done about them.
My heartfelt sorrow goes out to the families of those hurt by this tragedy who not only lost a son and daughter but a grandchild also. My thoughts are with you.
Yep.
I was on the Highway while it was pithing down, yesterday.
The truckies kept boring along as though it was broad day-light overtaking the amateur motorist and blinding them with road spray.
Fastards.
Sure, they are up high and have vision ahead.
But, they destroy the (360 degree) vision of everyone else when they are close.
They overtake.....
Blinding us.
We try to overtake a crippled turtle.....it blinds us.
With spray.
Duck 'em.
You will never be forgotten Rachel.
Ed: the information regarding Rachel's pregnancy came directly from the police.
And so we count the bodies and lives that could have been. If anyone knows this stretch of road and the amount of heavy traffic it carries on a daily basis then you will know what I am talking about.
I know only too well the fear of travel this road and the terror of having it ignored while all the money goes into the South-East. But they expect my vote!
Every time I travel this highway out of necessity, I wonder when I leave home whether I will survive it. It's a terrible feeling to have knowing it is the road I have to travel on a regular basis.
When someone recently ran up the back of me on the open highway I couldn't believe it but it could have been worse.
It's more than time to do something to make this highway a safer road. Filling in the pot holes isn't enough.
I was on the brink of tears after reading about the victims of this. To have read that these four poor souls including the unborn child's future has been ripped away from them, their families and their friends in a split second on the road brings a sickening feeling.
It seems that with so many life changing tragedies on our roads today, people appear to have become numb to it (not to mention the government). Accidents on Australian roads should be high priority in the media as much or more so as cancer awareness, anti smoking, binge drinking, obesity, interest rates, cost of living and violence. Especially as it is one of the things we as a society have the most control over.
How can road users just carry on driving so carelessly and inattentively? and blaming governments for poorly maintained road, although true is still a copout. Road users are as much to blame. It's not a matter of slowing down on major highways as this can make often be the cause in some circumstances.
Australian drivers need to wake up and realize you're not only sitting in death traps, but also deadly weapons. Start respecting the piece of machinery you're using like you did when you first learnt to drive, and as mums around the country would say "for heaven's sake be careful on the road!"
I need to say, as a result of your post, that my post was not designed nor was it intended to 'cast blame' on governments.
As a driver, I am only too aware of the abusive nature of neglect on our roads and, indeed, any roads. It is the nature of the beast to challenge the elements.
However, what I am saying, is that, road repairs are not enough, widening a long, narrow, heavily-used highway buy less than the width of the shoulder in strategically-targeted 'spots' is not enough.
I realise too. the astronomical expense required to attend to our roads, but what cost human life?
Inner city Brisbane and surrounds can have millions fed into an underground water reserve [which of course the average householder would not be furnished with if the ultimatuum struck, don't get it wrong and think it's for the people when it's ultimate aim is NOT] or a bridge or underground tunnel none of which are truly necessary, but the roads upon which our food - the very basics of human subsistence - and chattels and lives travel are IGNORED AND DANGEROUSLY NEGLECTED.
I will leave it here and end by saying, the EVIDENCE is in the the useless waste of human lives but then, so the underlying attitude towards the value of life as held dearest in the human heart is evidenced in the CULLING of that ancient -all too soon to be mythical - KANGAROO.
Humanity's destruction of life and the relentless unwillingness to face up and change it, meaning things remain THE SAME.
I can change my habits and refine them to near faultlessness, but if others refuse to acknowledge change and / or the need to change - anything from roads to attitudes to behaviours then all is lost.
DON'T DRIVE FASTER THAN YOUR GUARDIAN ANGEL CAN FLY
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