A double-decker bus trip from Philadelphia to Toronto came to an abrupt and deadly halt Saturday when the towering vehicle strayed from its usual route and plowed into a low railway bridge, leaving four dead and injuring scores of others.
Vicky Reed, 71, was one of a group of at seven Canadians who escaped serious injury. Reed said she was trying to find a comfortable position to fall asleep at about 2:30 a.m. ET when she was suddenly catapulted out of her seat by a terrific jolt.
"I fell over, was thrown over people, and then it was all quiet," said Reed, of Dundas, Ont. "The top of the bus had been pushed back just like an accordion."
The Toronto-bound Megabus was on the Onandaga Lake Parkway — a route it was not supposed to be on — when its upper tier smashed into the railway bridge, turning it on its side and sending it barrelling into a concrete support at the side of the road. The crash took place in a suburb of Syracuse, some 400 kilometres southeast of Toronto.
"I immediately looked to see where my husband was and he didn't answer me,"Reed said. "Then I saw him moving and I thought, 'Well, at least he's not dead.'"
A Foreign Affairs spokesperson in Ottawa confirmed late Saturday that none of the Canadians on board the bus had been killed or seriously injured. At least seven Canadians, all from Ontario, were among the 28 passengers on board the bus.
Don Carmichael, senior vice-president for Coach USA, which operates Megabus, said the details of the incident were still "sketchy." He didn't know why the bus with 28 passengers had gone off its prescribed route when it crashed.
"It is not an alternative route prescribed, that's going to be part of our investigation," he said. "We really have no idea why it was on that route."
Carmichael said the bus driver had driven the route "a number of times" and would have known the proper routing to come off Interstate 81 for a scheduled stop at the Regional Transportation Centre in Syracuse.
Onondaga County Sheriff Kevin Walsh said he believed the driver made a wrong turn when getting off the interstate.
"Whether he saw the bridge, we don't know," Walsh said. "There were all kinds of warning signs at several locations, including flashing yellow lights."
Many of the passengers aboard were rushed to various area hospitals with injuries that reportedly ranged from minor to serious.
Police identified three of the dead as Kevin Coffey, 19, of Kansas, Ashwani Mehta, 34, of India, and Benjamin Okorie, 35, of Malaysia. The name of the fourth victim, a woman in her teens or early 20s, has not yet been released, said Onondaga County Sheriff Kevin Walsh.
There was no indication the driver, who was in hospital Saturday along with the four passengers, was intoxicated, he added.
One passenger was in critical condition and the other four, including the driver, were in serious condition, but were expected to survive, Walsh said.
Reed said the four passengers who were killed were seated at the top of the bus, near the front, right where the vehicle would have crashed into the low-hanging bridge.
"The bus was too tall and so it sort of ripped the top of the front part of the bus off," said Reed. "The bus was then sort of on its side."
Reed, who suffered a knee injury from the crash, said she saw one passenger, a woman, whose face was covered in blood; another was moaning in pain, one leg trapped under a piece of steel debris.
The driver, who has been on the job since less than a year, emerged from a cloud of concrete dust — injured, but alive.
"His face looked like it had been cut with razor blades, he couldn't understand what happened, he was ... in shock," said Reed.
Lee Veeraraghavan, 27, a Ph.D student at the University of Pennsylvania on her way home to Toronto, said she was in the back of the bus on the lower level when she woke to a bang. She was thrown to the other side of the aisle and ended up with a woman on top of her.
"I just remember coming to in pain and a lot of broken glass under the bus, and there was a woman's legs on top of me," she told the Syracuse Post-Standard.
"People were calling for help and moaning," she said.
Beneath the bus there appeared to be a severed leg, said Veeraraghavan. She said she tried not to look at it again.
Someone managed to pry open what appeared to be a door and the passengers got out. As Veeraraghavan exited the wreckage, she said she saw an unconscious man hanging upside-down from the upper level. A paramedic later told passengers the man had died, she said.
Richard Blansett with the Red Cross of central New York said his organization was providing support to rescuers as well as those who survived the crash. He said there were still passengers being treated at four different hospitals, with some requiring surgery.
At least 14 passengers were released and were at a Syracuse hotel where the Red Cross was providing them with meals and emotional support.
Blansett said he had personally spoken to four Canadians who were on board the bus, while they were recuperating at the hotel.
Red Cross workers met with passengers to help them cope with the emotional toll of the crash, Blansett said.
"They're folks who've been through a very, very arduous experience," he said. "They're in a very fragile state and we're trying to do everything we can to provide emotional support and the physical support they need."
The bus left Philadelphia on Friday night. It was scheduled to stop in Syracuse and Buffalo on its way to Toronto.
Photographs from a local television station showed the top level of the bus crushed and partially peeled back in the front. The double-decker struck the bridge span between two large signs warning that the clearance was 10 feet, 9 inches.
Carmichael said the fatal crash is the first such incident for Megabus since its launch in 2006.
"We have extremely high standards of safety and we've transported in excess of seven-million people and never an incident like this, " he said.
The bus line said it would co-operate fully with authorities to figure out how the crash occurred. The company also said it would transport the passengers who have been released from hospital to their final destinations.
A spokesman for the New York State Department of Transportation said the railway bridge where the accident occurred had been the site of previous mishaps.
"Over the years there have been several incidences where tractor trailers have become wedged under the bridge and had to be backed out," Gene Cilento said, noting there had previously been "no fatalities associated with it."
Cilento called Saturday's accident "extremely serious."
He said local and state police will investigate the accident and the department of transportation will look into any safety recommendations as a result.
— With files from Mary Gazze, Diana Mehta, Steve Fairbairn and Dominique Jarry-Shore
