Tonopah bus crash leave some in serious condition

Jace Radke and Keith Paul

Friday, Sept. 8, 2000 | 11:42 a.m.

Two British tourists were in serious condition this morning at University Medical Center -- including a 72-year-old woman who lost parts of both arms -- after a tour bus crash near Tonopah injured all 41 aboard.

Seven others were transported to the Las Vegas hospital following the Thursday afternoon accident and six of them were hospitalized -- four of whom were listed in fair condition today.

The tour bus left Las Vegas Thursday morning and crashed in the desert near Tonopah at 2:45 p.m., sending emergency workers into action statewide.

The California Sun Lines bus, based out of Chattsworth, Calif., was headed south on U.S. Highway 6, about 20 miles northwest of Tonopah, when the driver is believed to have lost control of the bus, Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Richard James said.

"At this point it's looking like there was some kind of driver's error," James said. "The bus looks like it went to the right and then the driver over-corrected to the left before over-correcting again and causing the bus to overturn. It then slid on its side along the shoulder and on the road for about 200 feet."

When the bus came to rest, a 200-foot trail of glass and metal shards marked the path of the slide.

The bus had stopped in Tonopah, about 200 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for lunch a little over an hour before the accident, James said.

Everyone on the bus suffered some kind of injury, with most people suffering a combination of fractures, bruises and road burns from the slide, James said.

Many of the tourists, who were all adults from England and Wales, were taken to Tonopah by school bus to be triaged at the Nye County Regional Medical Center.

The more seriously injured were flown by airplane and helicopter to UMC and Washoe Medical Center in Reno. About 15 people were taken to Washoe.

Those taken to UMC and the extent of their injuries include:

James said as many as six helicopters and planes were used to transport the injured, including a U.S. Air Force helicopter out of Nellis Air Force Base and two Nevada National Guard Blackhawk helicopters from Reno. The aircraft arrived throughout the night at McCarran International Airport and North Las Vegas Airport where the patients were transferred to American Medical Response ambulances.

Nevada Emergency Management Director Frank Siracusa said that the two National Guard helicopters were dispatched to the accident site immediately.

"It's in one of the worst possible places for an accident," Siracusa said, referring to the crash site's distance from medical facilities.

The tour bus was headed to Mammoth Lakes, Calif., where the tour group was scheduled to spend the night before moving on to Yosemite National Park and San Francisco.

A manager at the California Sun Lines Inc. offices said the company has 25 tour buses of different sizes, and would not confirm that the Sun Lines bus that crashed Tuesday was one of her company's fleet. Sun reporters

Mary Manning and Ed Koch contributed to this story.