Los Angeles, CA: A Metro light rail train and a University of Southern California shuttle bus crashed into each other on a busy street in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday, hurting at least 55 people, two of them badly.
The LA Fire Department says the crash happened just before noon on Exposition Boulevard, close to the USC campus and the Natural History Museum.
The police said that two of the victims were taken to the hospital with major injuries and that 16 others were taken there in fair condition. 37 more people were treated at the spot.
Dave Sotero, a spokesman for LA Metro, said that the bus went where an E Line train was going. If you want to take the light rail from East Los Angeles to downtown Santa Monica, most of the way is along streets. Some of the bridges don’t have gates.
When Genesis Hernandez got off a Metro bus to catch the E Line to Santa Monica, where she goes to college, “all of a sudden I just saw a bunch of ambulances going by,” she said.
From a platform at the Expo/Vermont Metro stop, the 19-year-old could see where the crash happened. “The bus got hit on the front end for sure,” she said. “The train didn’t look too badly broken.”
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News video from TV showed that the red and white bus’s left side had hit the first car of the train. The bus’s front end had a lot of damage.
A statement from USC Transportation says that the accident happened while the 40-passenger Starcraft bus was going westbound on Exposition Boulevard. There was only the driver and one passenger on board at the time of the crash. Officials from the fire department say that the bus driver and a customer were the two most seriously hurt.
Officials say that there were more than 150 people on the Metro train going to Santa Monica.
According to Sotero, the Los Angeles Police Department would be in charge of the probe.
The first investigation shut down Exposition Boulevard in both ways. Transit Authority Metro said that trains would run less often and cars would take people through the crash area.
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