‘There was confusion’: Hele-On bus crashes through guardrail, rolls down embankment, lands on passenger side

Big Island police continue to investigate a frightening early morning traffic incident Sept. 30 involving a Hawai‘i County Hele-On bus that crashed through a guardrail and tipped onto its side after rolling backward and down an embankment along Māmalahoa Highway (Highway 19) near Laupāhoehoe.

All 22 passengers aboard the bus at the time of the crash were transported by multiple ambulances to Hilo Benioff Medical Center for further evaluation of injuries.

Hawai‘i Fire Department personnel also examined the 22 passengers and the 66-year-old bus driver at the scene.

An elderly man who was a passenger on the bus reported the most serious injury, which was a minor laceration to his hand.

Hāmākua patrol officers responded just before 5 a.m. Tuesday to the area of the 25.5-mile marker — near Laupāhoehoe Scenic Lookout — after the bus already rolled down the embankment on the ocean side of the highway.

Early morning quiet in the small East Hawai‘i town was shattered as the bus rolled down a large hill, coming to rest dangling above Peter and Meg Hacker’s backyard.

“My wife and I heard a noise that sounded like a 747 crashing into the house or something,” Peter Hacker told Hawai‘i News Now, adding the crash even vibrated their house.

Awakened by the crash, the couple thought maybe it was a tree falling or an earthquake. With no apparent answer at hand, they decided to investigate.

“We couldn’t figure it out,” Hacker told the O‘ahu TV news outlet. “We got up, pitch black, and we start shining flashlights and we see a bus overturned …”

Police said the bus stopped at Laupāhoehoe Scenic Lookout to pick up passengers. The 66-year-old Hilo man driving the bus said he put it in park and went to check for available seating in the back of the bus for new passengers.

That’s when the bus began rolling backward onto the highway, went through the guardrail, down the embankment, coming to rest on its passenger side.

“It was like a scene from a disaster movie,” Hacker told Hawai‘i News Now.

Meg Hacker jumped into immediate action, grabbing a big flashlight as she was running out the door of their home and a ladder. That’s when she saw the roof hatch on the bus pop open and a head emerge, to which she instantly yelled: “Are you OK?”

The 22 passengers and driver were helped by the Hackers and their neighbors to get safely out of the bus and down the hill.

It was a chaotic and confusing situation, especially since — like the Hackers — some of the bus passengers had just woken up, only to find themselves in their rescuers’ backyard.

“I tried to take them a little [farther] away after a while, from the hill, and then they started to talk about aches and pains and problems and fears, like ‘Where are we?'” Meg Hacker told Hawai‘i News Now. “So there was confusion. A lot of confusion.”

One young man who was riding the bus told her he thought he was dying. He was asleep, but as soon as he started hearing and feeling everything during the crash, he woke up, saying after being helped to safety: “I didn’t know where I was, so I assumed I was going down the cliff into the ocean.”

“He was so scared and relieved at the same time,” she told the O‘ahu news outlet.

The young man’s relief was justified, as injuries could have been much worse had the bus taken a different route down the embankment.

“If it had rolled all the way down to my yard, I think we’d have a different story today,” Peter Hacker told Hawai‘i News Now. “I think we would have some deaths.”

He added that the bus was also at such a steep angle where it rested on the hill that it could have rolled over and crushed him, his wife and their neighbors — as well as the passengers they were helping — at any time.

The crash closed Māmalahoa Highway at the 25.5-mile marker for more than 3 hours Tuesday morning. It was re-opened shortly before 10 a.m. after the bus was towed to Hawai‘i County Mass Transit headquarters in Hilo, where it sits as police continue their investigation into the crash.

Hawaiʻi County Mayor Kimo Alameda told Hawai‘i News Now on Tuesday while making an appearance on Spotlight Now that he doesn’t remember a county bus getting into a crash like this in the past.

“This is a major issue for us,” Alameda said, adding that a lot of people rely on the Hele-On bus service to get to work, doctor’s appointments, the post office, bank and to see family and friends.

The bus driver is contracted through Roberts Hawaiʻi, a spokesperson of County of Hawaii told O‘ahu’s KITV. He was removed from his driving duties pending further investigation.