4 Die When Car Hits Hot Mud

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Four young men died when their car crashed into a pool of steaming thermal mud, police said today.

Police said the four, all residents of Rotorua, south of Auckland, probably had no chance to escape after the accident near Lake Rotorua because the accident damaged the car’s roof and jammed the doors. Another motorist, who saw the accident, tried to break the windshield with a rock and dug into the mud with his bare hands in a futile attempt to free the four. Wellington physicist Gary Turner said the mud had a temperature of about 158 degrees.