In the early hours of February 12, a van carrying nine people rear-ended a truck near the entrance of Jixiong Tunnel on Meihe highway, Guangdong Province. The truck was carrying a load of fiberboards, and the collision caused a huge fire that raged on for close to two hours before being extinguished.
Six of the people in the van died in the blaze and the other three were injured. The wounded are currently being treated in Guangdong East Hospital for injuries that include multiple broken bones.
The passengers in the van had been spending the Lantern Festival holiday with family in Xia village in Shaxian county, located in Fujian province's Sanming city. They were on their way back to Dongguan, Guangdong, where all operated restaurants specializing in Shaxian cuisine. Because of the holiday rush on bus and train tickets, the passengers had opted to hire a driver from Dongguan to bring them back.
The van, which should have held seven people at the most, instead had nine packed inside at the time of the accident. According to relatives of the injured, two of the passengers in the van were brothers. The older one was traveling with his son, while his younger sibling was with his wife and son. The other three people were from another family in Xia village.
The two brothers, along with the younger man's wife, all perished in the fire.
According to family members, the survivors were asleep at the time of the accident and are not sure how it occurred.
Police in Meizhou, Guangdong, suspect exhaustion was the reason behind the collision. The driver of the van had traveled from Dongguan to Shaxian County, a nine-hour journey, on February 11 to pick up his passengers. On that very evening, he set out again for Dongguan. Near the Jixiong tunnel in Meizhou, roughly 5.5 hours into the trip, he must have slipped up and hit the truck ahead of him.
The survivors of the crash recall that the driver took a break at a rest stop during the journey. However, since no one else in the van was able to drive, there was no chance of taking turns at the wheel, an oversight that ultimately ended in tragedy.
Cleanup crew on the scene later in the morning.
Burnt fiberboards in the aftermath of the accident.
[Images via Southern Metropolis Daily, QQ Video]
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