The crash victims on the overturned bus were 60 to 80 years old

Aug 23, 2013 06:46 GMT  ·  By

A bus crash on the 210 freeway in California has left 55 people suffering minor and moderate injuries, reports say.

“It's a little early to determine whether it was driver error. [...] We are worried more about the injured people than the actual investigation itself,” Saul Gomez, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol tells NBC Los Angeles.

A tour bus crash left 52 passengers injured in the Irwindale area. The bus capsized and rolled at roughly 10 a.m. near the San Gabriel (605) Freeway.

The incident triggered a multiple-vehicle collision that injured three people in other cars.

“The initial triage identified a couple of patients that were moderate and then as we continued to remove the patients from the bus, it is very fortunate that all the patients were either moderate or minor in their injuries. We had no critical patients,” local Dep. Chief John Tripp says.

CBS Los Angeles details that five people have been transported to a hospital via helicopter. Five of the patients with more serious wounds were hospitalized at County-USC Medical Center.

The travelers were on route to the San Manuel Indian Bingo and Casino from the San Gabriel Valley. They are mostly elderly passengers, with ages ranging from 60 to 80 years old.

The bus was operated by the Da Zhen Travel Agency of Monterey Park and many people on it were from China.

According to the U.S. Transportation Department's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the carrier has reported no accidents within the last two years.

“There were elderly people stuck on top of the other. They were going about 70 miles an hour (112kph) and got thrown onto each other. […] They were very quiet; I would say they were in shock,” witness Jeff Lewis recalls for LA Times.

“The tires locked up and then they swerved left again, and then it swerved right, and it looked like he was gonna get on the shoulder okay, but then he over-corrected and then it went over on its faster side into the dirt,” he describes.