Province The Prince George Citizen - Wednesday, November 29, 2000 - 7 Collision kills six near Revelstoke Tour bus had mechanical problems earlier this month Southam Newspapers The tour bus involved in a fiery crash near Revelstoke Monday night that left six people dead and 21 injured was ordered off the road just two weeks ago with faulty brakes and other mechanical problems. The bus owned by Surrey Bus Service Ltd. of Burnaby had only returned to service on Friday after passing a reinspection by provincial motor vehicle officials the same day. During a routine check on Nov. 15, provincial inspectors found the bus had leaking air brakes, damaged front air bags and other deficiencies, said David Kosub, a spokesman for the Insurance Corporation of B.C.’s driver and vehicle licensing division. “On Nov. 24 we reinspected the bus and found that everything has been fixed and it was given a pass,” Kosub said. “When we do an inspection, it’s a very thorough one, and all those items were fixed,” he continued. “Once they’ve been fixed, they’ve actually met the terms of our order and we really have no choice but to allow them to get back on the road again.” 4 RCMP Sergeant Art Kleinsmith said the eastbound tour bus carrying Taiwanese visitors drifted into the opposite lane a few metres into the curving, unlit snow shed near Rogers Pass about 45 kilometres east of Revelstoke. But investigators were still trying to determine what caused the bus to move into oncoming traffic. “It is premature at this time to determine a cause,” he said, adding neither driver error nor mechanical failure had been ruled out. The accident claimed the life of a 27-year-old Revelstoke man who was driving the westbound truck, the 46-year-old bus driver who was from Alberta and four women who were part of the tour group from’Taiwan. The names of the dead were not released. The 21 injured passengers aboard the bus, including two young children, all suffered injuries ranging from cuts and broken bones to severe internal injuries.The Vancouver Sun was unable to reach the other company directors. Eight of the surviving accident victims were taken to hospital in Golden, east of the crash site, for treatment. The rest Gov’t may forgo timber revenues to help industry VANCOUVER (CP) — The provincial government is prepared to forgo some timber revenues and even allow log exports to try to bolster struggling forest companies in northwestern British Columbia, Forests Minister Gordon Wilson said Hiesday. The largest of the area’s companies in trouble is government-owned Skeena Cellulose. Skeena’s sawmilling operations have been losing money and are operating intermittently. The company is surviving on its Prince Rupert pulp mill revenues alone and is nearing the limit of its $200 million line of credit. Wilson said the province is prepared to consider reduced provincial revenues to stimulate economic activity. “We take the view that the situation is so depressed here at the moment that we are already forgoing revenues .simply because the economics don’t work,” he said from Hazelton. B.C. A number of companies have shut down because of market problems and the difficulty of ex- tracting wobd, “so we are not getting any revenue,” he said. “What we are trying to do is find a way to get some revenue, get people back to work and get these companies through what is obviously a very difficult time.” Through the jobs protection commissioner, the government is prepared to negotiate economic plans for five local companies^ the largest being Skeena Cellulose and West Fraser Timber. Components of the plans include: IA market-based pricing system for four million cubic metres of timber in the forests supplying sawmills along Highway 16 east of Prince Rupert. ■ Log and wood chip exports. ■ Relief from forest licence provisions that require companies to log a specific volume of timber or lose their licences. ■ Allowing independent logging contractors tc harvest the licensees’ timber if they can find niche markets for it. November 27 - December 2 Purchase any one item */• OFF One Time Only ★ ★★★★★ FRIDAY & SATURDAY 8:00am - 10:00only hase a 2nd item % AH' OFF Day vows to fight in next campaign \*r pi ivlv RCMP Const. Shawn Pollard examines what Is left of the drivers area in the wreckage of a bus at a wrecker's yard in Revelstoke. — including eight in critical condition — were taken to Rev-elstoke’s Queen Victoria hospital and later transferred to hospitals elsewhere in B.C. Police didn’t know how fast the two vehicles were going when they collided, but the crash shredded both of them. The truck’s cab was laid open, with the driver’s seat and steering wheel pushed well back. The nose of the bus was compressed into the third row of seats and the wreckage largely unrecognizable. The accident happened in the 316-metre Lanark tunnel, a curved, open-sided snow shed on the twisting two-lane Trans-Canada Highway. The highway was closed for about 14 hours. i Southam Newspapers PENTICTON — Stung by a dismal showing in Ontario, a determined Stock-well Day vowed Hiesday to stay on to fight the next federal election while insisting the Canadian Alliance had won the battle over the rival federal Tories for • the country’s conservative voters. “It’s a joy for me to announce today this is Day 1 of the next federal election,” the Alliance leader declared. “I haven’t considered quitting at all.” Indeed, he speculated he might be the only one of the current federal leaders around to fight the next battle at the polls. Day told reporters that Alliance supporters he had already consulted were “pragmatic” about the results, which gave the Liberals a bigger majority and the Alliance only two seat* in Ontario. They recognize the Alliance was caught offguard by the early election but now had time to make its case across the country before the next election, he said. Day argued the fledgling party had achieved solid gains in both seats and popular vote, as opposed to the Tories who lost big ground on both fronts. The Conservatives, who wound up with eight fewer seats than they won in 1997, scored less popular support than Kim Campbell’s “disastrous” showing in 1993 when the party was reduced to two seats in Parliament, he said. • “We went up in seats,” Day said. “The Progressive Conservatives went down in seats. We went up in support. The Conservatives lost.” The Alliance won 66 seats, six more than in 1997, and climbed to 25 per cent of the popular vote, 6.2 per cent over the 19 per cent it won in the last election. Southam photo Stockwell Day prepares his notes before speaking to the media in Penticton on Tuesday. Anxious to highlight bright spots in the near Liberal sweep of Ontario’s 103 seats, Day billed the Alliance’s second-place finish in about 80 ridings as concrete evidence of the party’s growing foothold in the province. Alliance officials said Tory-Alliance vote-splitting was a factor in only about 15 ridings. Still, the failure to retire Tory Leader Joe Clark and deprive the Conservative party of official party status has raised questions in some quarters about whether the giant effort to remake the Reform party into the Alliance and put a new leader at its helm was worth all the cost and energy. Day acknowledged the Alliance had been hurt by the aggressive Liberal campaign to fuel fear about the party’s intentions on everything from health care to old-age pensions. r. boulet)