Buses hang over I-5 after collision

01:59 PM PST on Friday, December 19, 2008

KING5.com Staff

SEATTLE – Two tour buses have collided and both are hanging over Interstate 5.

The accident happened near Denny Way in Seattle at about 12:30 p.m....

Two buses slide down E. Thomas St., one crashing through the guide rail and suspended over I-5, in Seattle on Friday.

Students were screaming as buses crash through I-5 barrier

By MIKE BARBER AND KERY MURAKAMI
P-I REPORTERS

A couple of charter buses with dozens of people aboard slid and crashed into each other on Capitol Hill and crashed through the guardrail on Melrose Street.

Two of three buses carrying students with the Columbia Basin Job Corps home on Christmas break from Moses Lake, and bound for Seattle's Greyhound bus station, slid down an icy street at Melrose Street near Denny Way coming to rest with their front end's hanging over the Interstate 5 freeway.

All passengers have been taken off the bus with minor injuries to a few, according to the Seattle Fire Department. Firefighters believe the buses are stable.

The third bus in the caravan escaped the crash.

Jesse Till, 20, of Tacoma, was on the first bus and said he sensed that something was going to happen when the bus started down the hill. Till was on the phone with his mother, Patty Till, and grabbed his friend's knee. Both were sitting in the first row.

"I was watching the cars drive below us," Till said. He said he was thinking, "I'm going to die."

Meanwhile, Patty Till who was going to meet him at the Greyhound station in Tacoma, panicked and raced up to Seattle. "I just heard a lot of chaos and crashing sounds," she said.

Passenger Rico Collins, 16, said the buses got off the Olive Way exit from I-5, going down the hill westbound when the first bus crashed into the railing. The second bus then crashed into the first bus, and nudged the first bus farther over the side. Students from the second bus pulled the windows latches and jumped out of the windows.

"I was just sitting in the back of the bus, and I didn't think anything like this would happen," said Collins, who was on the second bus.

Sandra Erwin, a resident who lives in an apartment told the Northwest Cable News that the buses turned onto Thomas Street, a road that was "not closed but should be."

Erwin said she tried to warn the buses not to turn but was too late, and watched them slide. Erwin was quoted as saying the bus hit the guardrail with "a horrible, horrible noise."

Another passenger on the second bus, Alex Hammell, 16, of Bothell, said the kids were telling the driver "don't go down this hill." Windows shattered, and people were cut, he said.

Seattle Fire Department spokeswoman Helen Fitzpatrick said no serious injuries were immediately reported.

A few people were taken to Harborview Medical Center as a precaution, Fitzpatrick said. The buses seemed in no imminent danger of tumbling over.

The accident, which closed two right northbound lanes, has caused a half mile backup, and a gawkers' backup in the southbound lanes from the scene to the state Route 520 bridge exit.

The Columbia Basin Job Corps is a federal education and job-training program for students 16 to 24 years old, who live on residential campuses.

One of the students, Brittney Doyle, 18, of Enumclaw, who was on the first bus in a fourth row seat, said the bus began to slide as it descended the hill, hitting the curb.

"I started praying when we bumped the curb. I was like, 'Oh, my God, start praying now'," she said.

As the bus gained momentum, Doyle said she looked across to the other side of the freeway and fixed on a sign.

"I just saw the Evergreen Bank sign getting closer and closer and I thought, 'Oh, my God, we're not going to stop'," she said.

Her bus came to rest with the front two wheels hanging over the edge of the freeway 20 to 30 feet below. It was then struck by a second bus, she said.

"When we were hit by the second bus everybody started panicking. They all scrambled out the (emergency) windows," Doyle said.

An hour and a half after the 12:30 p.m. accident, the buses continued to rest side by side, with the wheels of one bus hanging over the railing and the front of the second bus against the railing.

Cody Lamb, 22, was on one of the buses that crashed. He said just before the accident that the bus slid slightly, and then glass shattered.

"People were screaming, 'Oh my God, oh my God!," he said. Lamb was unhurt and made it to the Greyhound Bus station at Eighth Avenue and Stewart Street, where his mother Evelyn Lamb was waiting for him.

Evelyn Lamb had received a call from another son, saying Cody was in an accident. When she saw Cody arrive at the bus station unhurt, she cried, "There he is, there he is... I was wondering if he was hurt. I was scared to death."

Evelyn Lamb had seen footage of the accident, and marveled that there weren't more serious injuries.

"It didn't seem possible that it could only be bumps and bruises," she said.

She's happy to have her son home safe for the holidays.

"We don't have much for Christmas. It was just going to be us," Evelyn Lamb said.

P-I reporter Brad Wong contributed to this report. P-I reporter Mike Barber can be reached at 206-448-8018 or mikebarber@seattlepi.com.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/392969_bus20.html