Location in the state of California (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Reports first came in of an overturned bus at about 6:30 p.m. near the town of Forest Falls, which is about 80 miles east of Los Angeles, San Bernardino County fire spokesman Eric Sherwin said.
Sherwin said 27 patients have been treated at the scene, but it is not clear how many have been killed.
The injuries range from minor to life-threatening, and patients were still being extracted from the bus more than an hour after the crash, Sherwin said.
The bus crashed on a mountainous stretch of the two-lane Highway 38. There was also a truck involved, Sherwin said, but it was not clear how.
At least seven ambulances were called to the scene, and patients were being taken to several different hospitals, fire officials said. Numerous calls began flooding the California Highway Patrol and San Bernardino County fire dispatch lines soon after the crash.
Community Hospital of San Bernardino said it had received one patient from the crash, but it didn’t have information on the patient’s condition.
Sherwin did not know where the bus was headed or coming from, but Highway 38 leads to Big Bear, a popular area that’s home to a ski resort and other recreation.
TV cameras showed the white bus sitting upright. Sherwin could not verify whether the bus was pushed upright or did not overturn.
The California crash comes less than a day after a bus carrying 42 high school students and their chaperones slammed into an overpass in Boston. Massachusetts state police said 35 people were injured and that the driver had directed the bus onto a road with a height limit.
