A bus driver is seriously hurt but two busloads of teenagers are shaken but otherwise OK after an crash in Gatineau just past the Macdonald-Cartier bridge around 4 p.m. Thursday.
“All I felt was a wrecking ball hit our bus,” said Andrew Godmere, a grade 10 student at Lester B. Pearson Catholic high school.
Around 120 students were on their way to go skiing at Mont Cascades when one charter bus crashed into the other.
“There were two buses. I was in the front one. The back one swerved and hit my bus,” he said.
“The bus behind us was trying to swap lanes and then it decided to come back.”
That’s when the buses collided.
“My friend and I poked our heads out the window. The back bus driver was pinned behind the steering wheel. There was blood all over the front windshield of the bus. It was a flat-fronted bus,” he said.
Godmere said they pulled over onto the shoulder.
The driver was extricated and taken to hospital.
Godmere said paramedics were on the scene and injuries to passengers are minor.
“Someone has a welt on their head from hitting the seat. Other people have whiplash or just bad headaches,” he said.
The entire windshield of the rear bus was smashed and the bumper and back end of the front bus are also damaged.
The students are boarding new buses and heading back to Ottawa.
kelly.roche@sunmedia.ca
http://www.ottawasun.com/news/ottawa/2011/02/03/17143926.html
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