Double bus crash in Seattle.

[Nusa]

Right now, www.cnn.com, live video banner at the top of the site:

Northbound I-5 in Seattle, there are two charter busses crashed through and hanging over a retaining wall above the interstate. They're not in any real danger of falling, but the forward ends are about 40 feet in the air. The door exits are un-usable.

[Nusa]

The live coverage is over now.

Here's a story and pictures about it: http://www.komonews.com/news/36458659.html

[Tom Y]

So how full do you think the drivers pants are?  Tom

[NJT 5573]

The roads are a little slick in the neighborhood today. Very lucky, no injuries. I think the drivers should have got out and walked it out to make sure they were OK, but these are the 2nd and 3ed buses of 3, the first one made it. He probably just came off the hill brakes locked and iced it up for the next two. Looks like they were out sledding! Very steep hill also. These buses came from central Wa. and ran some very challenging roads just to get here, so its a little hard to second guess them, you know they have seen alot of miles of snow and ice, but I think they should have known better.

[Nusa]

It's sounding like most of the "minor injuries" were from panic diving/falling out the emergency exit windows, not from the crash itself.

[zubzub]

I drive on snow and ice all the time and usually all is well but every so often there is just absolutely no grip.  Even after years of driving in this it still gives me the weebies when it happens.  The weird thing is if you were to drive like it's going to happen all the time you would never get anywhere and cause accidents from going too slowly.  When it does happen I always do my best to slow things down at the same time as looking for an escape route.  Usually I stop before the run off lane has to be tried.  In the case of these two the empty lot looks good, but when it's really icy you can't even climb a curb so what do I know.  I agree that perhaps the first shined it all up for the next two.  Around here the worst intersections are the ones where yahoos have all been spinning their wheels to get going, that ice gets all polished up after a few hours and has no grip at all.  Anyhow in their own way they all made it which is the best news.  All of the above has to do with my experiences with driving vans, small trucks and cars in the snow although I did throw the 4104 around a bit in the bus yard the other day and it felt pretty tossable, in fact the engine back there is where I like the weight.

[Nusa]

They keep updating the story and adding pictures to the story I linked. Check again if it's been a while.

[Tom Y]

The way I read it, this was bus 1 and 2.  Bus 3 stopped before the hill. A good thing. Tom Y

[BG6]

Even if they're Eagles, doesn't mean they can fly.

However, realistically, a 40- or 45-foot bus down a 30-foot drop is likely to not cause a lot of injuries.  Perhaps even fewer than were caused in the evacuation, especially if it had stopped first, then been bumped over the side.  A lot of the energy would be eaten up as the bus underside scraped over the edge.

And, if you look at the pics, there was really no chance that this was going to happen.  Less than 10% of the weight of Bus 1 was out over the edge -- the other 20-some-odd-thousand pounds of bus, several TONS of passenger weight, plus whatever was in the cargo bays was all on the other side.  Not what I would describe as "precariously dangling" . . .

In other words, this was nothing more than the equivalent of dropping both front wheels in a ditch.  Even a sticks and staples motorhome wouldn't have taken much damage from something like this, it happens all the time (just not so spectacularly).

The real damage was from the impact of the other bus (which seems to have taken the lion's share of damage).

[zubzub]

kind of makes sense that the second one came off worse.  the 1st bus used the barrier and the undercarriage to decelerate the 2nd bus used it's front end and the side of the 1st bus to decelerate.  My uncle used to do accident analysis on the autobahn so I have no idea what I am talking about but I have always been fascinated with the way things bang against each other at speed.   

[Van]

One bus is definetly an MCI the other looks to be an Van Hool,definetly not Eagles.Van

[Airbag]

Hats off to all you drivers in the snow. I drive buses in Tucson area and don't see much of that stuff. Our occasional problem is flash floods in the monsoon season.