"They were going to Tauranga for Mother's Day ... because one of my brothers is there," Auckland man Maloni Vaea told the Herald.
Speaking last night from his mother's home in Onehunga, where family and friends were gathering to grieve, an exhausted Mr Vaea said he had not slept since hearing the news on Saturday night. He said he felt like he had to be the strong one when people arrived at the house "crying and crying".
He described his mother, sister and sister-in-law as wonderful and lovely people.
The six other relatives in the van - two girls aged 2 and 15, two women aged 20 and 57, and two men aged 29 and 41 - were treated and discharged from Tauranga Hospital, as was the passenger of the car - 35-year-old Sam O'Brien.
Mr O'Brien was travelling in his 20-year-old niece's car and said they had pulled over to the left of SH2 before trying to cross the road to enter his driveway on the other side. The car and minivan, also travelling east, then collided.
Speaking from the crash scene yesterday, Mr O'Brien said there was a "boom" after they pulled over.
"We were up in air and ended up over here. Everything was just going backwards," he said. "As the impact happened, I grabbed my niece. I put my arm around her."
When the vehicles came to a stop, Mr O'Brien thought his niece was dead. Then he saw flames.
"I was a bit stunned ... I just rested her face on my shoulder while I turned the car off but the door, her door, was smashed in. I couldn't find her seatbelt so I called out to get a knife from home to cut her out because the car was on fire."
Mr O'Brien said the van was also on fire by the time someone had brought a knife from his house. His niece's legs were trapped and he was worried they did not have much time.
"She was out. I thought she was dead. My arms were dead too. Then she kind of woke up when we started to move her around.
"I didn't want to move her too much because she might have had injuries that we couldn't see. But the smoke was coming in. It was getting real foggy with smoke. We just had to get out of there."
Mr O'Brien managed to free his niece and pull her out of the wreckage. He laid her down and waited until ambulance staff treated her and took her to hospital.
"My niece took the brunt of everything. It was a fast impact, just like that," he said.
"My whole side's battered and bruised, like I've been body slammed a million times ... My finger was just hanging on by a bit of skin. It was cut off."
Mr O'Brien's niece, just days from celebrating her 21st birthday, was in a stable condition at Tauranga Hospital yesterday.
Tauranga Fire Service senior station officer Phil Price said the crash was "particularly nasty" and the fire reached 8-10m in height.
Tauranga Senior Sergeant Chris Summerville said serious crash investigators conducted an initial scene examination but inquiries were continuing.
- additional reporting: Nikki Papatsoumas of NZME. and Bay of Plenty Times
