‘It happened so fast,’ bus driver says of fatal collision with Duck boat

SEATTLE The driver of a charter bus carrying dozens of North Seattle College students said it appeared the Ride the Ducks driver lost control of the six-wheeled vehicle just before veering into the bus and killing four passengers, said the president of Bellair Charters.

“We were heading southbound on Aurora and the Duck boat was heading north,” Richard Johnson said Friday, recalling what the driver told company officials. “The Duck boat lost control and crossed the lanes and into our coach.

“It happened so fast,” he said.

The bus was carrying 48 students and staff from North Seattle College’s international program during an orientation trip when the collision occurred just after 11 a.m. Thursday on the Aurora Bridge. Killed were four students on the bus from Austria, China, Indonesia and Japan, and more than 40 others on both vehicles were injured.

Inspectors with the state Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC) arrived at headquarters of Bellair Charters near Bellingham as well as the Ride the Ducks corporate office in Seattle Friday morning to begin investigating the cause of the crash.

The UTC inspectors are looking at the vehicles involved in the crash, their maintenance records as well as the drivers’ history.

“We want to determine whether the company was negligent and not maintaining their vehicles, or if there was anything the driver might have done to contribute to the accident,” said Anna Gill, a spokeswoman for the UTC. “Sometimes freak things happen, but we’re there to determine whether this could have been prevented or not.”

The UTC said its investigation is separate from the probe by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which has sent a team of investigators to Seattle. This is the first time the NTSB has investigated an amphibious vehicle crash on land, not water, an official with the federal agency said.

If the UTC determines that there were any violations, or if either driver was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, the companies will face financial penalties, Gill said.

Seattle police conducted a preliminary evaluation of the drivers Thursday and said they not find any evidence of impairment.

The UTC was scheduled to conduct a routine inspection of Ride the Ducks next year, but the inspection was moved up to next month because of the crash, said Gill.

“We’ll be looking at the entire fleet, all their drivers. It’s our typical companywide inspection,” Gill said.

In 2012, the UTC conducted a comprehensive safety inspection of Ride the Ducks’ fleet, including driver qualifications, employee drug and alcohol testing and vehicle maintenance records, issuing a satisfactory rating to the company, the agency said.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray said Friday that Ride the Ducks has agreed to keep its six-wheeled tour vehicles off the roads after the crash. The Duck name is derived from the designation DUKW for vehicles used as landing craft by the U.S. military during World War II.

Bellair Charters, based in Ferndale, was last inspected by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in 2013 and received a satisfactory rating, according to the UTC. The company’s overall safety record in the last two years appears to be good, according to federal records.

More than a dozen investigators with the NTSB are on their way to Seattle from around the country, NTSB spokesman Eric Weiss said Friday.

“Once the investigators arrive they’ll hit the ground running,” Weiss said. “They will be looking for evidence, they will try to examine the vehicles.”

During a briefing Friday afternoon, NTSB officials said they would not speculate on the cause of the crash. The investigation could take up to a year, said NTSB board member Earl Weener.

Witnesses reported seeing the Duck vehicle, which was heading north on the Aurora Bridge, swerve sharply to the left, where it struck one of two charter buses carrying students southbound from North Seattle College. The impact ripped open the bus and victims were strewn around the wreckage.

The Aurora Bridge was closed for about 12 hours after the crash.

Johnson, the Bellair Charters president, said the Duck vehicle “T-boned” the upper front of the charter bus. His driver wasn’t seriously hurt, but Johnson said he’s concerned with how he’s handling the accident emotionally.

“We’ve spoken to the driver who was on the scene, our directors of safety who were on the scene,” Johnson said. “The pictures are reality. It’s just sad. It’s heartbreaking.”

While some witnesses have said it appeared the Duck vehicle had some sort of malfunction moments before the crash, Johnson said his driver didn’t tell him that.

“I feel for the Duck boat driver, how can you move through life now without this impacting you? Our driver, what he witnessed yesterday and what he went through, is not something you can recover from.”

Bellair has not released the name of the driver. Johnson said the driver is on leave and the company has offered him counseling.

The international students killed in the crash have been identified as Claudia Derschmidt, a 49-year-old woman from Austria; Privando Putradanto, an 18-year-old man from Indonesia; and Mami Sato, a 36-year-old woman from Japan. The name of a 17-year-old girl from China has not been released because she is a minor.

Meanwhile, students, faculty and staff gathered Friday morning at North Seattle College to meet with college President Warren Brown, Mayor Murray, Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole and other officials to discuss the crash. Members of the media were asked to stay outside the room.

“Yesterday was one of the most difficult days to be mayor,” Murray told the media. “it was one of the most moving days to be mayor as I watched this city come together to help people, young people, whose families were in pain.”

Murray said his office and the Seattle Department of Transportation will look into the safety of the Aurora Bridge, which has long been a safety concern because of the span’s narrow traffic lanes. While Murray noted the bridge is “structurally sound,” barriers between the two directions of traffic could be considered.

Brown said it’s unclear whether North Seattle College will be open for the first scheduled day of classes on Monday. The college has been posting updates on its website.

Elizabeth Van Inwegen cleared her schedule Friday morning to attend the meeting at the college, where she’s worked for the past two years as an admission office assistant.

She said she works closely with the college’s international students as they arrive on campus each fall, helping them register for classes and test their English and Math abilities.

“I was driving home and heard about the crash on the radio,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh my God. The students who died, I was probably just giving them their tests the other day.’ It’s just horrible and sad.”

Van Inwegen said the college’s international students quickly become a close-knit group living so far from home, and the school supports them as much as possible.

“We’re a very connected community, like a family, so it’s nice that we’re coming together this morning. We stick together.”

Trang Nguyen, 18, a newly arrived international student from the Vietnamese city of Vung Tau, said she didn’t join Thursday’s bus tour because she was feeling sick.

Instead, she stayed with her host family near Northgate. She found out about the crash when another student messaged her on Facebook.

“I talked to one Vietnamese student who was on a second bus behind the bus in the crash,” Nguyen said in Vietnamese with a friend interpreting. “She said it was very scary but she wasn’t hurt. She said there were one or two Vietnamese students on the bus in the crash but that they weren’t badly hurt.”

Xing Wutao’s parents in Shenzhen, China, were asleep when the accident occurred. They didn’t know whether their 18-year-old son was involved in the fatal crash until they woke up at 6 a.m. their time, saw the news and phoned him.

Xing, who arrived in Seattle on Sept. 16, wasn’t on the bus because he and two friends, also students from China, had turned down an invitation from a teacher to come along.

“We didn’t get on the bus because we just wanted to go downtown by ourselves. We wanted to see the city on our own,” he said Friday before heading into the meeting at the college.

Xing and his friends were riding a Metro bus from the college to downtown Seattle when a friend of Xing’s who attends the University of Washington texted him about the crash.

“It was so scary,” Xing said. “We thought about it a lot on our way to downtown. We thought about what if we were on the bus. We would have been in danger.”

Xing said he wasn’t able to fall asleep until 2 a.m. Friday.

“We’re just trying to relax today,” he said, shaking his head.

In the main courtyard of the campus, passers-by stopped by a table with candles to pen messages of support to the victims and their relatives on slips of paper.

“Please write a supportive message to the people who lost a family member or friend in the tragic bus accident,” a sign on the table says. “Any kind words help. We will get the messages translated and forward them. Thank you!”

(Information from Seattle Times staff reporter Steve Miletich and Times archives is included in this report.)

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