A NYC tour bus accident resulted in 14 deaths and several injuries when the bus was overturned, then sliced from end to end by a pole of a large sign early this morning on I-95.
The bus, operated by World Wide Tours, carried at least 31 passengers and was returning to Manhattans Chinatown from Mohegan Sun, a casino in Uncasville, CT. Passengers ranged in age from 20 to 50, according to officials.
The driver survived the crash and told police he lost control of the bus while attempting to evade a tractor trailer truck. Police are searching for the truck, which did not stop after the accident. New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said it was unclear whether the two vehicles made contact.
The accident occurred at approximately 5:35 a.m. on the southbound side of Interstate-95 in the Bronx, where emergency workers spent hours attending to the scene and helping critically injured survivors. The southbound lanes of I-95 were still closed Saturday afternoon.
"The truck either starts to swerve or perhaps even hits the bus," Kelly said. He said both vehicles were moving at "a significant rate of speed."
When the bus swerved, it hit a guard rail, where it scraped along the side of it for approximately 300 feet. The bus then overturned and crashed in to a post supporting a highway exit sign.
The pole entered through the front window, shearing the bus from front to back along the window line, peeling the roof off all the way to the back tires. Fire chief Edward Kilduff said the majority of the passengers were hurled to the front of the bus by the sudden impact with the pole. In addition to the 14 fatalities, seven other passengers were critically injured. Fifteen were being treated at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, while another five patients were taken to St. Barnabas Hospital, where two were on life support.A survivor, Chung Ninh, 59, told The New York Times and NY1 News of his experience. He said he had been asleep in his seat, when he suddenly found himself hanging upside down from his seat belt, surrounded by the dead and screaming. He described one man bleeding from a severed arm. He said when he tried to help one bloodied woman, the driver told him to stop, because she was dead. "Forget this one. Help another one," he said. Ninh said he and other passengers who were able climbed out through a skylight. Kelly said investigators had been given some numbers from the license plate of the tractor trailer, but hadn't identified or located a vehicle yet. The National Transportation Safety Board reported it was sending out a team of investigators. After the crash, firefighters took out seats and cut through the bus roof to reach a handful of passengers pinned in the wreckage. Kilduff called it "a very difficult operation."
