Maryland

30 Taken To Hospitals After Bus Carrying Kids on DC Field Trip Overturns on I-95

The 8th grade students from C.W. Henry School in Philadelphia were on field trip to Washington, D.C.

Thirty people were taken to the hospital when a bus carrying Pennsylvania school children overturned on Interstate 95 in northeastern Maryland, state police said.

The bus was headed to Washington, D.C., on a field trip when it and another vehicle crashed near exit 89 in Havre de Grace, just before 10 a.m. Monday. Police believe a car trying to pass the bus caused the crash.

"Apparently during that maneuver, the driver lost control of his vehicle ... and then came back across in front of the bus, clipping the front of this bus," Maryland State Police spokesman Greg Shipley said. "The bus then traveled off the righthand side of Interstate 95, struck an embankment, traveled down that embankment, struck a tree, snapping that tree in half, and then turning over on to its left side."

Police said all persons on the bus, 26 students, three adult chaperones and the driver, were transported to area hospitals. Two people were flown by helicopter to trauma centers with more serious injuries, but no deaths have been reported.

One teacher was flown to the University of Maryland Medical Center's trauma center in Baltimore, the University of Maryland Medical System said in a statement. A spokeswoman for the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware, said a student had been taken there.

Neither facility would give information on the patients' injuries or conditions.

The University of Maryland said in a statement that 17 patients were taken to its hospital in Harford County. Nine patients were taken to another of the university's hospitals in Havre de Grace. Two children were taken from a Maryland hospital to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Dr. Steven Fountain, an emergency physician at Harford Memorial Hospital, said at a news conference that he did not expect any of the patients to be held overnight. He said many of the patients suffered muscle strains and contusions.

According to officials, the children on board the bus are eighth grade students at C.W. Henry School in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia. They were on their way to the Police Memorial in the nation's capitol. Their bus was in a caravan with three or four other vehicles, mostly carrying Philadelphia police cadets.

Werner Coach president Heath Ochroch confirmed to NBC10 Philadelphia that the bus belongs to his company in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.

Copyright The Associated Press
Contact Us