The report says the road, a sometimes-narrow 76-kilometre industrial logging route that connects Port Alberni to Bamfield, was wide enough at the crash site for two vehicles to pass without contact. Emma Sydney MacIntosh Machado, of Winnipeg, and John Matthew Geerdes, of Iowa City, Iowa, died in the crash. The two students were seated beside one another when the coach bus rolled down an embankment. Several other students were injured. The chartered Wilson’s Transportation coach bus had been fitted with seatbelts, but their use by students was not enforced by the driver or school staff, the coroner’s report says.
Safety improvements have started on Bamfield Main, which was targeted for upgrades after a bus carrying UVic biology students on a field trip crashed in 2019, killing two teenagers. Huu-ay-aht . . .