Four people have died after two helicopters collided mid-air near Sea World on the Gold Coast.<\/p>\n
Three more people are in a critical condition in hospital, Queensland Police Service Acting Inspector Gary Worrell said.<\/p>\n
All of those who died or were seriously injured were from the same helicopter, he said.<\/p>\n
He said the aircraft landed on a sandbank outside the Sea World resort, making it difficult for emergency crews to access the crash scene.<\/p>\n
Police and witnesses said one helicopter was landing and the other was taking off when they collided.<\/p>\n
One helicopter plunged to the ground face down and the other managed to successfully land – a Sea World logo could be seen on its side.<\/p>\n
The Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) said the incident occurred at 1.59pm (local time) and 13 patients were assessed at the scene.<\/p>\n
Eight patients were taken to Gold Coast University Hospital and one to Queensland Children’s Hospital in Brisbane, QAS said.<\/p>\n
It comes at the height of tourism season at the popular holiday destination. Sea World Drive at Main Beach has been closed, with motorists and pedestrians advised to avoid the area.<\/p>\n
Australian Transport and Safety Bureau (ATSB) is investigating the collision.<\/p>\n
“The ATSB has commenced a transport safety investigation into the fatal mid-air collision involving two helicopters on Monday afternoon,” ATSB chief commissioner Angus Mitchell said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“Transport safety investigators with experience in helicopter operations, maintenance and survivability engineering are deploying from the ATSB’s Brisbane and Canberra\u202foffices and\u202fare expected to begin arriving at the accident site from Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n
“During the evidence gathering phase of the investigation, ATSB investigators will examine the wreckage and map the accident site.<\/p>\n
The ATSB appealed for witnesses to come forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Four people have died after two helicopters collided mid-air near Sea World on the Gold Coast. Three more people are in a critical condition in hospital, Queensland Police Service Acting Inspector Gary Worrell said. All of those who died or were seriously injured were from the same helicopter, he said. He said the aircraft landed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2054"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2056,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2054\/revisions\/2056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}