Four passengers are dead as bus crashes into low-clearance railroad bridge.
A bus full of snoozing passengers turned into a chaotic scene of blood, cries for help and the calm assistance of fellow riders just after 2 a.m. this morning.
The crash of the double-decker Megabus into the railroad bridge over the Onondaga Lake Parkway jarred most of the 27 passengers from a sound sleep, with some of them thrown across the bus. Four passengers were killed and at least one more was seriously injured.
Lee Veeraraghavan was in the back seat on the lower level when she woke to a bang and found herself on the other side of the aisle with blood on her face, a woman on top of her, and the double-decker bus tilted on its right side.
Pavan Nukala of Philadelphia, was a passenger on the bus that crashed into the bridge overpass on Onondaga Lake Parkway. He is at the Red Cross Reception Center at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Syracuse. The center was set-up to help passengers that were injured in the crash.What she saw in the next 15 minutes aboard the Megabus that crashed into the railroad bridge on the Onondaga Lake Parkway horrified Veeraraghavan, she said.
“I just tried to get my bearings,” she said of her first reaction to the crash. “I just remember coming to in pain and a lot of broken glass under the bus, and there was a woman’s legs on top of me.”
Beneath the bus she could see what appeared to be a severed leg, said Veeraraghavan, 27, a Ph.D student at the University of Pennsylvania traveling home to Toronto. She tried not to look at it again, she said.
A male passenger helped Veeraraghavan get out from under the woman, who couldn’t be immediately moved. That man was very calm, Veeraraghavan said.
“People were calling for help and moaning,” she said. Some of the passengers started checking others to see who was conscious, she said.
Veeraraghavan called 911, but was unable to tell the dispatcher where she was. She saw the bus driver making his way through the bus, checking on passengers. His face was covered in blood, she said. That’s when she first realized that hers was too, from a cut to her eyelid.
“He was panicking, kind of,” she said. “He was saying, ‘I hit my head. I don’t remember anything.’¤” Veeraraghavan put the driver on the phone with the 911 dispatcher, she said.
Many passengers were trying to calm others, Veeraraghavan said. Many were praying. While she was on the phone with 911, she could hear a man screaming for help. Other passengers were telling her that man was hanging upside-down from the upper level, she said.
After about 15 minutes inside the overturned bus, someone pried open what Veeraraghavan thought was a door and the passengers escaped, she said. On the way out, she saw an unconscious man hanging upside-down from the upper level. A paramedic later told passengers the man had died, Veeraraghavan said.
Veeraraghavan said she’s ridden the Megabus twice a month for a year but feels unsafe riding on the upper level.
She was among 17 passengers who were taken to area hospitals then to the Crowne Plaza hotel in downtown Syracuse, where Red Cross workers were assisting them. At least one passenger underwent surgery and was in critical condition, according to Onondaga County Sheriff Kevin Walsh.
Megabus officials had put the passengers up at the hotel and was arranging to get them to their destinations.
The Red Cross had mental health counselors available and provided clothing to replace the torn clothes of some of the passengers, said Richard Blansett, the agency’s director of public support. The Red Cross also arranged to have prescription medications for passengers who lost their meds in the crash, he said.
Every time Reena Rai, 36, rode the Megabus, she sat in the front seat on the top level. On her trip back to Buffalo this morning, she decided to try something different.
“This was the only time I said, ‘Let’s try the back seat for a change,’¤” said Rai, who chose one of the last seats on the top level. “I was very, very lucky.”
When the bus hit the bridge, Rai was asleep. The crash woke her up.
“The next thing I knew there was a lady on top of me and her blood was just dripping on top of me profusely,” said Rai, who hurt her back in the accident. “I yelled, ‘Help, help!’¤”
Also sitting on the top level of the bus were Branislav Nikolic, 25, and Masa Nikolic, 24, from Toronto, Canada. The crash also woke them up.
“I heard smashing, the sound of metal being broken and sliding on the other metal,” Branislav said. “I heard my wife scream my name and at I that point I realized we were flipping.”
Because they were sitting near the middle of the bus, Branislav said, he and his wife got out easily, he said.
“The worst feeling was when we got out of it, seeing other people being injured,” said Branislav, who had a gash on the back of his head and bruises and scrapes on his left hand. “It was bad, just bad. A lot people crying and screaming. It was terrible.”
Pavan Nukala, 23, was also asleep on the upper level. His friend and he were traveling from Philadelphia to visit friends in Buffalo. The friend was awake for the crash, and was shaken from watching the bus swing from one side to the other, said Nukala, a Ph.D student at Penn.
The two of them helped a man in front of them who was bleeding and disoriented.
“He was losing his senses,” Nukala said. “He was nauseous. He was bleeding a lot. He didn’t know what to do.”
They smashed a window beneath their feet and got out, Nukala said. He saw one woman praying for her sister, who was seriously injured beside her, he said. Some of the passengers who were unhurt were tending to others, he said.
"Some of the others were saying, ‘I don’t need help, go on and get the others,’¤" Nukala said.¶
Fernando Alfonso contributed to this report.