EVANSVILLE – Five people were rushed to the hospital late Thursday morning after a collision between a charter bus and multiple vehicles on Evansville’s East Side.
Evansville Fire Department Deputy Chief Mike Ewald said responders “transported five patients to area hospitals.” In a subsequent news release, Evansville police spokesman Sgt. Anthony Aussieker put the number of hospitalized at two.
Ewald didn’t identify any of the injured. He said they ranged in age and their injuries varied “from minor to critical.” He also didn’t confirm a cause of the wreck.
Aussieker, speaking to reporters from the Target parking lot near the scene of the crash, said it amounted to one of the worst he had ever seen, at least visually and in its potential for damage.
“You train for the ‘what if,'” Aussieker said, “and this that ‘what if.'”
The collision happened just before 11 a.m. in the eastbound lanes of the Lloyd Expressway near the intersection with Cross Pointe Boulevard. A Courier & Press photographer on scene saw the bus had collided directly with an SUV and sedan. Both of the smaller vehicles were smashed nearly beyond recognition.
Ewald said first responders performed “pretty heavy extrication” on those vehicles. Aside from the bus, he said two other vehicles were involved in some capacity. The bus didn’t belong to METS or any area schools. It appeared to be a charter bus.
Ewald didn’t know if the hospitalized victims came from the bus or the cars. Aussieker said some of the other involved vehicles suffered “extensive damage.”
In the release, which Aussieker sent to media outlets around 2:20 p.m., he said the two drivers were hospitalized after being extricated. He didn’t mention any other potential hospitalizations.
“The exact series of events that led to the crash is still under investigation,” he stated. “This includes an accident reconstruction investigation and chemical testing per Indiana Implied Consent Law.”
With preliminary tests ongoing and crash reconstructionists early in the increasingly sophisticated process by which they determine what happened in the moments leading up to a crash, who many be at fault and why, Aussieker said he was “incredibly thankful” there were not more injuries.
“I will give so much credit to the Evansville Fire Department and they way they coordinated their efforts, their tactics,” Aussieker said. “We can credit them with those life-saving efforts. As far as the grand scheme of things, we have to work it together… to get in there and render aid to help extricate people.”
The Lloyd Expressway was closed for multiple hours, but reopened by the middle of the afternoon, EPD posted on social media.
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: 5 hospitalized after charter bus, vehicle collision in Evansville
Reporting by Houston Harwood, MaCabe Brown and Jon Webb, Evansville Courier & Press / Evansville Courier & Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Houston Harwood, MaCabe Brown and Jon Webb, Evansville Courier & Press | USA TODAY Network
