PALM SPRINGS, Calif. (AP) — A maintenance crew had slowed down traffic on a California highway through the night, and the work had gone on for hours without problems. Then a tour bus returning to Los Angeles from a casino trip slammed into the back of a semi-truck. Passengers who were asleep on the bus woke up to loud screams and the sound of crushing metal.
The gambling jaunt ended in one of the deadliest wrecks in California history with 13 people killed and 31 others injured.
Authorities said the bus was going much faster than the truck, causing it to plow about 15 feet into the truck on Interstate 10 just north of the desert resort town of Palm Springs.
“You can see it was a substantial impact,” California Highway Patrol Border Division Chief Jim Abele said.
It was not known if alcohol, drugs or fatigue played a role in the crash, but the bus was inspected in April and had no mechanical issues, Abele said. The bus driver was killed, and the truck driver received minor injuries.
The bus was coming from Red Earth Casino in the desert town of Thermal and was about 35 miles into its 135-mile trip back to Los Angeles.
CHP officers had been slowing traffic to allow utility workers to string wires across the freeway, Abele said.
Passengers told officials that most people were asleep when the crash occurred shortly after 5 a.m. Abele said it appeared the 1996 bus didn’t have seat belts and likely didn’t have data recorder that would reveal how fast the bus was traveling and whether the driver braked before impact.
“I was awakened by the sounds of people screaming for help,” passenger Ana Car, 61, told the Los Angeles Times. “I noticed a heavyset woman lying in the center aisle to my right yelling, ‘My legs! My legs!'”
Before April, the bus also was inspected in 2014 and 2015, the CHP said. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration records show it had no crashes in the past two years and had a satisfactory safety rating.
The front of the bus crumpled into the semi-truck’s trailer and debris was scattered across the key route through Southern California. Firefighters used ladders to climb into the bus’ windows to remove bodies, and tow trucks lifted the trailer to make it easier to reach the bus, whose front end was demolished.
Fourteen patients were sent to Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs, the area’s only trauma center. Four remained in critical condition Sunday evening, two were transferred to other hospitals for continuing treatment and the rest were treated and released, hospital officials said.
Many suffered facial injuries, a telltale sign they were not wearing seat belts, said Dr. Ricard Townsend, a trauma surgeon.
“It seemed as though most of the victims were unrestrained and were therefore flown through the air and ended up sustaining facial trauma,” he said.
Two other hospitals received patients with minor injuries.
The tour bus company, USA Holiday, has one vehicle and one driver, according to federal regulators. A call to the company was not immediately returned.
The company says on social media that it has more than 25 years of experience traveling to casinos in Southern California. It posts about quick turnaround trips leaving the Los Angeles area to casinos in the Southern California desert area and Las Vegas.
The bus owner’s neighbor said she’d often see a tour bus with the sign “USA Holiday” parked on the street in front of his apartment in a working-class neighborhood in Alhambra, about 7 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.
Sonia Anderson said the family who lived there — a man, woman and their college student son — had lived in the apartment for about 17 years. She said the father generally drove the bus and his wife and son would sometimes travel on the bus with him.
Anderson described them as a kind, close-knit family. “All three of them are hard-working people. Good people. Beautiful family,” she said.
The father was “always working, coming in and out, providing for his family,” Anderson said.
The National Transportation Safety Board is sending a team to California to investigate.
The crash comes two years after a FedEx truck veered across an interstate median north of Sacramento and slammed into a bus full of high school students, killing 10 people.
In 1963, 32 Mexican farm workers who were in the Central Valley as part of a work visa program were killed when a freight train struck the flatbed truck they were riding on. In 1976, a bus carrying the Yuba City high school choir plunged off a freeway ramp in Martinez, killing 28 students and one teacher.
Written by ELLIOT SPAGAT, Associated Press and OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press. Rodriguez reported from San Francisco. Associated Press writer Courtney Bonnell in Phoenix and Daisy Nguyen in Los Angeles contributed to this story.
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This photo provided by KESQ News Channel 3/CBS Local 2 shows the scene of crash between a tour bus and a semi-truck on Interstate 10 in Desert Hot Springs, near Palm Springs, in California's Mojave Desert Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016. Multiple deaths and injuries were reported. |KESQ NewsChannel 3/CBS Local 2 via AP; St. George News This photo provided by KMIR-TV shows the scene of crash between a tour bus and a semi-truck crashed on Interstate 10 near Desert Hot Springs, near Palm Springs, in California's Mojave Desert Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016. Multiple deaths and injuries were reported. | KMIR-TV via AP, St. George News This photo provided by KMIR-TV shows the scene of crash between a tour bus and a semi-truck crashed on Interstate 10 near Desert Hot Springs, near Palm Springs, in California's Mojave Desert Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016. Multiple deaths and injuries were reported. KMIR-TV via AP, St. George News Workers remove wreckage from a semi-truck that crashed with a tour bus on Interstate 10, west of the Indian Canyon Drive off-ramp, in Desert Hot Springs, near Palm Springs, Calif., Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016. A tour bus and the semi-truck crashed on the highway in Southern California early Sunday, killing at least a dozen of people and injuring at least 30 others, some critically, the California Highway Patrol said. | AP Photo/Rodrigo Pena, St. George News The damaged front of a tour bus is seen that crashed into the back of a semi-truck on Interstate 10 just north of the desert resort town of Palm Springs, in Desert Hot Springs, Calif., Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016. Several deaths and injuries were reported. | AP Photo/Rodrigo Pena, St. George News Workers remove debris from a semi-truck that crashed with a tour bus on Interstate 10, west of the Indian Canyon Drive off-ramp, in Desert Hot Springs, near Palm Springs, Calif., Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016. A tour bus and the semi-truck crashed on the highway in Southern California early Sunday, killing at least a dozen of people and injuring at least 30 others, some critically, the California Highway Patrol said. | AP Photo/Rodrigo Pena, St. George News Emergency personnel work the scene where a tour bus crashed into the rear of a semi-truck on westbound Interstate 10, just north of the desert resort town of Palm Springs, in Desert Hot Springs, Calif., Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016. Multiple deaths and injuries were reported. | Colin Atagi/The Desert Sun via AP, St. George News Trauma surgeon Ricard Townsend, who attended victims of the tour bus crash on Interstate 10, in Desert Hot Springs, Calif., talks about the injuries of the victims that he received at Desert Regional Hospital in Palm Springs, Calif., Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016 | AP Photo/Rodrigo Pena, St. George News The Alhambra, Calif., home at the top of the driveway, third from left, is the listed address for Teodulo Elias Vides, the registered owner of the USA Holiday bus company involved in a fatal crash on Interstate 10 in Palm Desert, Calif., seen Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016. A neighbor who for 17 years has lived near the bus owner, whom she called Carlos, his wife Grace and their teenage son, said he and his wife operated the bus company for as long as she's known the family. | AP Photo/Daisy Nguyen, St. George News A California Highway Patrol officer load items in bags into a CHP vehicle after a tour bus crashed with a semi-truck on Interstate 10, west of the Indian Canyon Drive off-ramp, in Desert Hot Springs, near Palm Springs, Calif., Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016. The tour bus and the semi-truck crashed on the highway in Southern California early Sunday, killing at least a dozen of people and injuring at least 30 others, some critically, the California Highway Patrol said. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Pena) Map locates a deadly bus crash in North Palm Springs, California; 1c x 3 inches; 46.5 mm x 76 mm | AP image, St. George News
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Very sad.
I was talking to an aunt/uncle that team drive a semi, and this spring they were given a truck that drives itself on the freeways. Once they give control over to the truck it speeds up, slows down, changes lanes, etc until they resume control. Within 5 years most semis will probably work this way, with human drivers handling the side-roads and actual deliveries, but just riding along as passengers for the vast majority of the trip.
It’s clear from accidents like this that buses need to be handled the same way. It’s very likely that the driver was either not paying attention, going to fast, drowsy, texting, or some combination of those. Even an alert system (“BEEP! You’re going to die in 3 seconds if you don’t slam on the brakes”) could have saved these lives.
I’ve very leery of fully autonomous cars where they driver can’t take control even if they want to (they’re testing vehicles that don’t even ~have~ a steering wheel and pedals), but technology that saves lives without turning us into useless morons is a good thing.
sounds like simply driver fatigue and distraction. thats all it takes
Unfortunately, the driver, along with several of the passengers, received the “death penalty” for the driver’s inattention. Whether he was drowsy, texting, talking to somebody, changing the station on the radio, or whatever it was, he paid the ultimate price. I am so sorry for him and the passengers. However, injuries could have been reduced if SEAT BELTS had been installed and used. I call for SEAT BELTS in all types of vehicles, INCLUDING SCHOOL BUSSES, and TOUR BUSSES. If they had been installed on this bus, injuries would have been lessened, at least. Chances are, there would have been less deaths. SEAT BELTS ON ALL BUSSES NOW!!!
u should write the governor, i’m sure he will care
in the state that allows triple trailers, traveling over 80mph safety first, lol
oops there was supposed to be a period be 80mph AND safety first, lol
*between, lol
happy rainy mondays, lol