The authorities did not identify the driver or any of the passengers.
Nothing was known about the driver’s condition at the time of the crash. The section of the highway where the crash occurred was subject to traffic stoppages at that time of the morning, as a maintenance crew was periodically pulling power lines across the highway. Chief Abele said at the news conference that the rig had slowed down because of the traffic breaks.
Officials said that there was no indication in the initial investigation that the bus driver had attempted to brake. Chief Abele said that that suggested the possibility that the driver had been experiencing “fatigue” or an emergency medical situation like a heart attack.
The bus was en route to Los Angeles from Red Earth Casino, near the Salton Sea, Chief Abele said.
Cleanup of the crash scene continued well into Sunday afternoon. Debris littered the road, and the westbound lanes of Interstate 10 remained closed. Around 1 p.m., a flatbed truck hauled away parts of the demolished trailer.
Monday, 24 October 2016
At Least 13 Killed in Bus Crash on California Highway
A bus traveling along a California highway here slammed into a tractor-trailer on Sunday morning, killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens more, according to the California Highway Patrol.
At a news conference on Sunday afternoon, Jim Abele, a chief with the California Highway Patrol, said that the tour bus was heading back to Los Angeles after a trip to a casino when it rammed into the back of the tractor-trailer shortly after 5 a.m. The driver of the bus was among those killed, he said.
“The speed of the bus was so significant that when it hit the back of the big rig, the trailer itself entered 15 feet into the bus,” Chief Abele said.
He said that the crash, which took place on Interstate 10 close to Palm Springs, was highly unusual in the amount of people killed and injured.
“In almost 35 years, I’ve never been to a crash where there’s been 13 confirmed fatal accidents,” he said. “So it’s tough. It’s not an easy thing.”
Thirty-one of the bus’s 44 passengers, many of whom were asleep at the time of the crash, were taken to hospitals. The majority of the people killed had been sitting in the front section of the bus. Chief Abele said that the majority of the passengers were Hispanic.
Turn Onto Old Dixie. After a Long, Rocky Stretch, It Becomes Obama Highway
he rechristened road runs beside a railroad freight line, slicing across a modest corner of Palm Beach County and a considerable section of the Southern psyche. It used to be called Old Dixie Highway.
But now this two-mile stretch, coursing through the mostly black community of Riviera Beach, goes by a new name. Now, when visitors want to eat takeout from Rodney’s Crabs, or worship at the Miracle Revival Deliverance Church, they turn onto President Barack Obama Highway.
Our national journey along this highway is nearing its end, these eight years a blur and a crawl. That historic inauguration of hope. Those siren calls for change. The grand ambitions tempered or blocked by recession and time, an inflexible Congress and a man’s aloofness.
War, economic recovery, Obamacare, Osama bin Laden. The mass shootings, in a nightclub, in a church — in an elementary school. The realization of so much still to overcome, given all the Fergusons; given all those who shamelessly questioned whether our first black president was even American by birth.
His towering oratory. His jump shot. His graying hair. His family. His wit. His tears.
The presidency of Mr. Obama, which ends in three months, will be memorialized in many grand ways, most notably by the planned construction of a presidential library in Chicago. But in crowded and isolated places across the country, his name has also been quietly incorporated into the everyday local patter, in ways far removed from politics and world affairs.
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You can find a trapdoor spider (Aptostichus barackobamai) inching across certain parts of Northern California, or see a bright orange spangled darter (Etheostoma obama) swimming in a Tennessee river, or come upon a lichen (Caloplaca obamae) the color of gold on Santa Rosa Island, off the California coast.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/24/us/turn-onto-old-dixie-after-a-long-rocky-stretch-it-becomes-obama-highway.html?_r=0
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