5 die as bus rollover sets off pileup on US road
Print Edition
Five people were killed and about 60 were injured on the Pennsylvania Turnpike early Sunday morning, when a loaded bus went out of control on a hill and rolled over, setting off a chain reaction that involved three semi-trailers and a passenger car.
The injured victims, ranging from 7 to 67, are all expected to survive, although two remain in critical condition, authorities and hospital officials said on Sunday afternoon.
The crash, which happened at 3:40am on a mountainous and rural stretch of the interstate about 50-kilometer east of Pittsburgh, shut down the highway in both directions for several hours before it reopened on Sunday evening.
Two UPS drivers, Daniel Kepner, 53, and Dennis Kehler, 48, were killed in the crash, company spokeswoman Kristen Petrella said. Both were driving together in a semi-trailer out of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Petrella said.
State police have not identified the other three victims who were killed.
The bus was traveling from Rockaway in New Jersey to Cincinnati in Ohio, Pennsylvania State Police spokesman Stephen Limani said.
A tangled pile of vehicles
He said the bus, operated by a New Jersey-based company called Z & D Tours, was traveling downhill on a curve, careened up an embankment and rolled over. Two semi-trailers then struck the bus. A third truck then crashed into the trucks. A passenger car was also involved in the pileup.
Photos from the scene show a mangled collision of multiple vehicles including a smashed FedEx truck that left packages sprawled along the highway.
“It was kind of a chain-reaction crash,” Limani said.
Excela Health Frick Hospital in Mount Pleasant said it treated 31 victims, transferring a child and three adults to other facilities.
Hospitals brought in teams of social workers and psychologists to deal with the mental trauma, said Mark Rubino, president of Forbes Hospital, which treated 11 victims.
“The people coming in were not only physically injured but they were traumatized from a mental standpoint as well,” he said. Most were covered in diesel fuel when they arrived.
The hospital treated fractured bones, brain bleeds, contusions, abrasions and spinal injuries.
Many on the bus were from outside the United States.
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