Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
2002 Chevrolet 3500 extended
There’s been yet another tragic van roll-over accident involving refugees killed and severely injured — this time in Georgia, on I-75 between Atlanta and Macon. The deadly single-vehicle crash occurred on March 22 in Monroe county; two Bhutanese refugee men were killed and 13 other Nepali-Bhutanese and African refugees were injured. One of the men killed was also ejected from the vehicle. Several of the injured victims remain in the hospital in critical condition. This crash seems to involve the same (or similar) cause as a van roll-over crash in Arizona near Tuscon in June 2009 — failure of one of the van’s tires (may have been due to over-inflation, under-inflation, or road debris, etc.). The Resettlement and Immigration Services of Atlanta (RRISA), a joint affiliate of Church World Service (CWS) and Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM), resettled the refugees in Atlanta. An article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution explains what happened.
A tight-knit community of refugees from Bhutan is reeling from a van crash that claimed the lives of two men and injured another 13 people as they traveled from Atlanta to their jobs at a chicken plant in Perry.
Some of the injured remained in critical condition in a Macon hospital Tuesday, according to people who know them. And some of the victims were parents whose children were left with no breadwinner…
…The crash occurred around 9 p.m. on March 22 in Monroe County. The Chevrolet 3500 van they were riding in went off the road, hit a guardrail and overturned, according to the website of the The Herald-Gazette newspaper in Barnesville. The crash blocked traffic on southbound I-75 for nearly three hours.
Two men, both from Decatur, died: Tula R. Chamlagai, 44, and Kharka B. Chhetri, 49…
…The van passengers were on their regular nightly commute to a Perdue chicken-processing plant two hours south of Atlanta. They had been making the trek five times a week, Kafley said.
Two of the victims were African nationals and the rest were refugees from Bhutan. They knew each other because they’d been brought to DeKalb County by the same resettlement agency, the Refugee Resettlement and Immigration Services of Atlanta, Kafley said. Read more here
An article in The Telegraph in Macon gives more information:
…At least one of the passengers, either Chamlagai or Chhetri, was ejected from the van. It’s unknown whether any of the passengers were wearing seat belts, said Allison Selman-Willis, a sheriff’s office spokeswoman.
By the time we got there, people were everywhere,” she said.
It was unclear Wednesday whether members of the group were paying for the ride to Perry or if they were a carpooling group.
Thirteen of the vehicle’s occupants originally hailed from Asia. Two are from Ghana, Selman-Willis said.
The driver of the van, 29-year-old Bhim B. Bista of Atlanta, also owned the van. He was not tested for alcohol, she said.
“We don’t expect any charges for him,” Selman-Willis said.
Bista has been released from The Medical Center of Central Georgia. Three of his passengers underwent surgery Wednesday. The other surviving passengers were kept at the hospital Wednesday for observation, she said… Read more here
That article and an article in The Herald-Gazette newspaper in Barnesville indicates that the crash resulted from the failure of one of the van’s tires. I’m wondering if this was similarly due to tire over-inflation, as in the June 2009 Arizona (Texas Canyon) passenger van crash. In that tragedy six Burundian refugees resettled by IRC died; 11 others sustained injuries. The IRC was working with a company called Eurofresh that employed the refugees. In that case, the van was overloaded with passengers, the driver sped up to an estimated 80 mph to pass another vehicle, and a overinflated tire blew-out and the van hit a guide rail, resulting in a rollover.
How many of these tragedies must we have before we start doing something differently? It may just be a matter of regularly observing and checking tire inflation. On the other hand if any new, tiny leak or picking up a nail, or a blowout from an over-pressured tire, means that these top-heavy vehicles will lose control and roll, why do people continue to fully load these vans with refugee client passengers? Are resettlement agencies advising these refugees to keep tire pressure at correct levels and to not fully load them with passengers? If not, these tragedies will continue unabated.
**UPDATE** — Five injured victims discharged from hospital, two still critical, two have a hand amputated (Bhutan News Service). A commenter writes that [Sheriff's Office?] claims that it seems that none of the passengers was wearing seat belt.
