Bus plunges into gorge in Indian Kashmir, 35 dead

Kashmiri volunteers and medical staff move on a stretcher a girl injured on a road accident after a vehicle fell into a gorge along the Mughal road in south Kashmir’s Shopian district, at a hospital in Srinagar on June 27, 2019. Eleven passengers, including nine girls, died in the road accident so far, local media reported. 
Tauseef Mustafa, Agence France-Presse

SRINAGAR, India - At least 35 people were killed Monday when an overcrowded bus plunged into a gorge in Indian-administered Kashmir, officials said.

It was the second deadly crash in less than a week in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, renowned for its mountainous terrain and abysmal road safety record.

The bus skidded off a road in the remote Kishtwar region and fell into a deep, narrow valley, senior police official M. K. Sinha said.

Thirty-five people died in the accident and 17 were injured, local official Angrez Singh Rana said. 

Seven of the injured were in critical condition and were evacuated to a nearby hospital, he said.

A separate crash on Monday in neighbouring Himachal Pradesh state killed three school students and their driver, the Press Trust of India reported.

Last week, 11 students on their way to a picnic were killed when their bus fell into a gorge in Shopian district of Kashmir, officials said.

Some 150,000 people die in road accidents on average each year in India, according to official figures.

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19 dead, 60 hurt as Hong Kong double-decker bus overturns

HONG KONG - The driver of a double-decker bus that overturned in Hong Kong killing at least 19 people and injuring more than 60 was arrested on Saturday evening for dangerous driving, police said.

Images from the scene showed rescuers trying to reach passengers trapped inside the bus, which lay on its side with part of its roof torn off near the town of Tai Po in the northern New Territories.

It appeared to have slid on its side and hit a lamppost which smashed into the upper decks of the vehicle. The driver has been arrested on charges of causing death and grievous bodily harm by dangerous driving.

In an updated toll in the early hours of Sunday morning the city's Hospital Authority said another victim had died, bringing the total to 19 fatalities.

But ten of the injured were in critical condition, while another 20 were seriously wounded, officials said.

Most of the dead and injured were on the upper deck of the bus, Chan Hing-yu of the fire department told reporters.

The driver was suspected of being over the speed limit as he went down a slope and lost control of the vehicle, senior traffic superintendent Lee Chi-wai told reporters.

He was not in need of any medical treatment after the crash and was be sober, he added.

'REALLY CHAOTIC'

Speaking to local media, passengers said the bus was going to fast before the crash.

"It was much faster than I normally felt in a bus," one injured passenger told the South China Morning Post's online edition.

"And then it was like the tyre slipped, and the bus turned. It was really chaotic in the bus. People fell on one another and got tossed from side to side," he said.

Before the crash, passengers had complained to the driver who was reportedly 10 minutes late and he then started speeding up, the Apple Daily reported, quoting injured passengers at the scene.

One injured passenger told the Oriental Daily said it was like the driver was "intentionally using the bus to throw a tantrum."

Lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting of the Democratic Party urged the government to rethink the design of double-decker buses saying the upper decks had been "repeatedly torn off in accidents, posing a serious threat to passengers on the upper level".

He also called the government to address the issue of many drivers working overly long hours.

City leader Carrie Lam, who visited survivors at the Prince of Wales Hospital late on Saturday, expressed "deep sorrow" and pledged there would be an independent investigation.

DEADLY DOUBLE-DECKER ACCIDENTS

The southern Chinese city promotes its public transport system as one of the best infrastructures in the world but fatal accidents do occasionally happen.

Hong Kong's worst road traffic accident occurred in 2003 when a double-decker bus collided with a truck and plunged from a bridge, killing 21 people.

In 2008, 18 people were killed in another bus crash.

Fourteen people were injured last April when a double-decker tram tipped over, with a 23-year-old driver later arrested for dangerous driving causing harm to others.

The safety of Hong Kong's notoriously crowded waterways has also remained under scrutiny since 39 people were killed when a high-speed ferry and a pleasure boat crashed in 2012.

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Tennessee school bus crashes, kills at least six children

A bus carrying dozens of elementary school students crashed in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Monday, killing at least six children and sending 23 people to a local hospital with injuries, authorities said.

Five children were found dead on the bus and another died at a hospital, said Melydia Clewell, spokeswoman for the Hamilton County District Attorney's office.

Rescue teams were still going through the bus so the number of fatalities could change, she said. There are two or three children at the hospital "who could go either way," she said.

Students on the bus, which carried as many as 35 passengers, were in kindergarten through fifth grade, a spokesman for the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office said. That would make them roughly ages 5 to 10.

Asked about the crash following a budget hearing in Nashville, Governor Bill Haslam said the state would offer its assistance.

"It's a sad situation anytime there's a school bus with children involved, which there is in this case," he said.

Photographs issued by the Chattanooga Fire Department showed the bus on its side, wrapped around a tree.

The bus driver is being questioned and cooperating with investigators, the Chattanooga Police said on Twitter.

Twenty-three people were transported in ambulances to a local hospital, and the last patient was extricated from the bus, the fire department said.

Police Chief Fred Fletcher called the accident "every public safety professional's worst nightmare," the Times Free Press reported.

Two bloodied students laid on stretchers in a front yard nearly an hour after the crash receiving attention from first responders, while others not taken to the hospital appeared dazed with cuts on their faces, the newspaper said on its website. (Reporting by Frank McGurty and Daniel Trotta in New York; Editing by Howard Goller and Lisa Shumaker)

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13 dead in California tour bus crash: authorities

LOS ANGELES - Thirteen people were killed and 31 injured on Sunday when their tour bus collided with a truck on a major highway in southern California, the authorities said.

"They believe everyone was asleep on the bus," an emotional California Highway Police chief Jim Abele said, giving condolences to families of the victims, who were believed to have been visiting casinos.

The front of the bus was a mangled mass of metal after apparently plowing into the back of the large truck, news photographs showed.

"Because of the impact where the bus entered the back of the big rig, the majority of the people who were killed were in the front section of the bus," Abele said.

Although it was not known what caused the deadly crash, the bus was traveling fast -- faster than the truck it rammed, he added.

"The investigation will be ongoing," he said. The bus driver was killed; the truck driver survived. None of the victims was immediately identified.

"Unfortunately, several passengers have not been identified," Abele said. "Some IDs were not valid."

The bus belongs to USA Holiday, a Los Angeles area-based tour company that ferries customers to casinos.

The crash happened around 5:00 am (1200 GMT) in Palm Springs, some 110 miles (180 kilometers) east of Los Angeles.

Most of the passengers on the bus that initially left Los Angeles were Hispanic, the CHP chief said.

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No DUI in deadly California bus crash that killed Filipina

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – Authorities say the driver of the Greyhound bus that overturned on Highway 101 in San Jose on Tuesday morning was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

This bus crash killed 51-year-old San Francisco stay at home Filipina mom Fely Olivera and another woman, Maria De Jesus Ortiz Velasquez, a 76-year-old from Salinas.

State and federal authorities are now investigating other causes including driver fatigue.

The National Transportation Safety Board says it will also examine the bus for mechanical and structural defects, as well as road conditions, and the driver’s actions before the deadly crash.

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