At Least 13 Killed in Bus Crash on California Highway
By CIARAN MCEVOY and JONAH ENGEL BROMWICH
OCTOBER 23, 2016
NORTH PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — A bus traveling along a California highway here slammed into a tractor-trailer on Sunday morning, killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens more, according to the California Highway Patrol.
At a news conference on Sunday afternoon, Jim Abele, a chief with the California Highway Patrol, said that the tour bus was heading back to Los Angeles after a trip to a casino when it rammed into the back of the tractor-trailer shortly after 5 a.m. The driver of the bus was among those killed, he said.
“The speed of the bus was so significant that when it hit the back of the big rig, the trailer itself entered 15 feet into the bus,” Chief Abele said.
He said that the crash, which took place on Interstate 10 close to Palm Springs, was highly unusual in the amount of people killed and injured.
“In almost 35 years, I’ve never been to a crash where there’s been 13 confirmed fatal accidents,” he said. “So it’s tough. It’s not an easy thing.”
Thirty-one of the bus’s 44 passengers, many of whom were asleep at the time of the crash, were taken to hospitals. The majority of the people killed had been sitting in the front section of the bus. Chief Abele said that the majority of the passengers were Hispanic.
The vehicle, a 1996 MCI passenger bus, was owned and operated by USA Holiday Bus, a company based in Los Angeles, Chief Abele said. It had passed annual mechanical inspections for the past three years, including one in April. The bus did not have seatbelts.
The authorities did not identify the driver or any of the passengers.
Nothing was known about the driver’s condition at the time of the crash. The section of the highway where the crash occurred was subject to traffic stoppages at that time of the morning, as a maintenance crew was periodically pulling power lines across the highway. Chief Abele said at the news conference that the rig had slowed down because of the traffic breaks.
Officials said that there was no indication in the initial investigation that the bus driver had attempted to brake. Chief Abele said that that suggested the possibility that the driver had been experiencing “fatigue” or an emergency medical situation like a heart attack.
The bus was en route to Los Angeles from Red Earth Casino, near the Salton Sea, Chief Abele said.
Cleanup of the crash scene continued well into Sunday afternoon. Debris littered the road, and the westbound lanes of Interstate 10 remained closed. Around 1 p.m., a flatbed truck hauled away parts of the demolished trailer.
Richard Ramhoff, a spokesman for Desert Regional Medical Center, the area’s designated trauma center, said that the hospital received 14 adult victims of the crash.
Five of the patients received by Desert Regional were in critical condition, three were in serious condition and six had minor injuries, Mr. Ramhoff said in a statement.
Patients with less serious injuries were sent to other hospitals. Lee Rice, a spokeswoman at Eisenhower Medical Center, confirmed that the hospital had received 11 adult victims who had suffered minor injuries in the crash. The Desert Sun reported that JFK Medical Center in Indio, Calif., received a five patients, all of them with minor injuries.
Chief Abele gave no significant update on the condition of any of those injured at his afternoon news conference.
“By the grace of God, nobody else will pass away,” he said.
http://mobhtmlnytimes.com/2016/10/24/us/california-bus-crash.html
Task 2
Direct Sentences
- “The speed of the bus was so significant that when it hit the back of the big rig, the trailer itself entered 15 feet into the bus,” Chief Abele said.
- “In almost 35 years, I’ve never been to a crash where there’s been 13 confirmed fatal accidents,” he said. “So it’s tough. It’s not an easy thing.”
- “By the grace of God, nobody else will pass away,” he said.
