A bus that was involved in a crash with a tractor-trailer and a car left 27 people injured on Interstate 81 in Nedrow, N.Y. Twenty-six passengers suffered minor injuries on the Pine Hills Trailways bus traveling from Toronto to New York City. The bus driver is in serious condition at a Syracuse hospital. Police say the car driver has been charged with driving while intoxicated.
A tour bus heading from Toronto to New York City crashed into a wrecked car and a tractor-trailer outside Syracuse early Thursday, injuring more than two dozen people, authorities said.
The Pine Hill Trailways bus with 52 passengers on board was travelling south on Interstate 81 around 2:30 a.m. when it slammed into a car that had just crashed into a guard rail and came to rest in the highway's left lane just south of Syracuse, the Onondaga County Sheriff's Office said.
Deputies said the bus then hit the rear a tractor-trailer whose driver had pulled over on the highway's shoulder to offer assistance to the car's driver.
The driver of the car was charged with driving while intoxicated.
Twenty-six of the passengers and the bus driver were injured, officials said.
It took emergency crews two hours to extricate the bus driver from the vehicle's smashed-in front end, deputies said. The man, who was described as a veteran driver, was listed in serious condition at Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse.
"We are very concerned about his well-being," said Dan Ronan, a spokesman for the American Bus Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group that returned messages left for Pine Hill Trailways.
The injured passengers mostly suffered lower extremity, chest, back and facial injuries, all of them apparently minor, police said. They were transported to hospitals in the 10 ambulances and other emergency vehicles that responded to the crash scene.
Thirteen patients were treated at the Upstate University Hospital and 11 of them were released, a spokeswoman said in an e-mail to The Canadian Press.
The bus company does not have information on how many passengers were Canadian, Mr. Ronan said. However, he said 31 people got on the bus in Toronto, the starting point of the regularly scheduled route to New York City. The rest of the passengers boarded in Buffalo and Rochester.
Onondaga County sheriff's detective Jon Seeber told the Post-Standard that there was a language barrier between some of the passengers and rescue crews.
Deputies said the bus left Toronto on Wednesday evening and was scheduled to arrive in New York City around 6:30 a.m. Thursday. The uninjured passengers were taken to Syracuse's bus station, where some boarded another bus for Manhattan, while others arranged their own transportation back home.
The bus is owned by Trailways of New York, a Hurley, N.Y.-based company that also operates Adirondack Trailways, New York Trailways and NeOn Bus.
Robert Johnson told Syracuse's WSTM-TV that he boarded the bus in Rochester and was awake when the crash occurred, but many of the other passengers were sleeping at the time.
"All I heard was a boom and my head hit the seat; I mean mad noise, it was crazy," Johnson said. "I never experienced that in my life and I'm still scared to death by it."
With reports from Jill Mahoney and The Canadian Press.