A tour bus crash along a Southern California freeway resulted in at least 50 people being injured.
The driver of a bus carrying gamblers to an Indian Casino made an unsafe lane change along the freeway, struck a car and then overcorrected to the right before it careened through a chain-link fence and overturned into a dirt ditch. The bus came to a stop on its ride side between the freeway and railroad tracks, the Associated Press reports.
Ambulances and helicopters were on the scene on Interstate 210, about 20 miles east of Los Angeles. Firefighters laid out tarps as they evaluated the injured. According to California Highway Patrol Officer Elizabeth Van Valkenburgh, 52 people, most of them elderly, suffered from minor injuries.
Eight passengers needed immediate medical attention and five had to be flown by helicopter to Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. The passengers had suffered from blunt force trauma and were in guarded condition. Three people were also treated at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena. One of them was an 86-year-old man who broke his ribs. All of those victims are expected to survive.
Some passengers were able to get out of the bus on their own but others needed to be helped by firefighters or other drivers who stopped at the scene. Many of the victims only spoke Mandarin or Cantonese and required translators.
The bus driver, who has been identified as Jinquan Yang, 55, of Alhambra, was properly licensed and hasn't been charged for the incident. The driver of the car that Yang struck was not injured.
The crash occurred at around 10 a.m. and the eastbound lanes of the freeway were closed for about six hours following.
The tour bus is operated by Da Zhen Travel Agency in Monterey Park. The bus was on the way to San Manuel Indian Bingo and Casino in Highland after picking up passengers in Monterey Park and San Gabriel. The casino is about 40 miles east of the crash.
The company has a "satisfactory: rating according to a federal inspection in 2010. The company hasn't had any crashes among its nine buses, however there have been two incidents of buses speeding in Arizona in February and another was following too close in May.
As far as mechanical inspections go, the company has only failed two out of 30 over the past two years, which is a good rate. Da Zhen runs 14 trips daily to San Manuel.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
