PENDLETON, ORE.: Survivors of a bus crash that killed nine people on a partly icy section of interstate in rural Eastern Oregon said Monday some passengers were thrown from the vehicle through broken windows after it skidded out of control, smashed through a guardrail and plummeted 200 feet down an embankment.
When the tour bus came to a rest, terrified passengers looked around for their loved ones.
“Some mothers screamed to find their son or daughter,” said Jaemin Seo, a 23-year-old exchange student from Suwon, South Korea.
The charter bus, owned by a British Columbia company, crashed Sunday just east of Pendleton while returning to Canada from Las Vegas — one of the stops on a nine-day western tour.
Aboard were 48 people, some of them exchange students from South Korea. Some passengers were from British Columbia, and some from Washington state.
Investigators say there also may have been a Japanese passenger and one from Taiwan, and they’re working with consular officials to identify them.
The survivors, who range in age from 7 to 74, were sent to 10 hospitals in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. At least 10 were released Monday, police said.
Authorities said Monday it could be a month or more before investigators and prosecutors decide whether to file any charges against the bus driver, a 54-year-old Vancouver man who was among the injured. He has spoken with investigators, Lt. Gregg Hastings said.
The bus was traveling west in the left lane of Interstate 84 when it hit a concrete barrier, veered across both westbound lanes and plunged through the guardrail and down the embankment, Hastings said. Police haven’t determined how fast the bus was going when it struck the center barrier.
The crash occurred near a spot on the interstate called Deadman Pass, at the top of a steep, seven-mile descent from the Blue Mountains.
Rescuers faced the challenge of bringing survivors 200 feet up a steep cliff, Pendleton fire Chief Gary Woodson said.
Seo said he was awakened by screaming and was ejected from a broken window as the bus careened down the hill. Seo had a broken ankle, a gash in his arm that required stitches and shallow scratches across his face.
Berlyn Sanderson, 22, of Surrey, British Columbia, said she also was thrown from the bus.
“It’s kind of like one of those dreams you have of the world ending,” Sanderson told reporters.
