640 WGST's Wendi Grossman talked with police spokesman Joe Cobb HERE
Atlanta Police held a news conference just after 11am. Here the complete event here...
Posted on 03/02/2007 5:01:33 AM PST by Broker
Edited on 03/02/2007 8:45:10 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Tour bus falls from bridge onto I-75
ATLANTA (AP) _ Atlanta police say at least five people are reported dead after a charter bus carrying a youth baseball team toppled off the Northside Drive bridge onto Interstate 75.
Update:
Six killed as bus topples onto interstate from overpass
ATLANTA (AP) _ Atlanta police suspect the driver of a charter bus that fell from an overpass onto a busy interstate, killing six people, may have been confused by how the lanes divided.
Police spokesman Joe Cobb says the bus that fell from an overpass at Northside Driver onto Interstate 75 around 5:30 a-m today carried a baseball team from Bluffton University in Ohio, a Mennonite-affiliated school about 50 miles south of Toledo. The head of emergency services at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta says 19 accident victims are at the hospital. All were students and all male. He does NOT have their ages.
Haley says three are in critical condition and 16 are being evaluated. Most have broken bones. The 16 are awake and talking.
Three people were taken to Piedmont Hospital, and seven were taken to Atlanta Medical Center.
Cobb says the bus driver apparently mistook the exit lane at Northside Drive off Interstate 75 as part of the carpool lane. Cobb says the driver came up over Northside Drive and continued over the side of the overpass.
The bus traveled over a two-and-a-half foot-tall-concrete barrier, leaving it intact, and through the middle of the overpass, falling onto I-75.
640 WGST's Wendi Grossman talked with police spokesman Joe Cobb HERE
Atlanta Police held a news conference just after 11am. Here the complete event here...
I've made that exit thousands of times and I can't imagine what caused this bus to do this other than mechanical failure or EXTREME driver error.
Prayers for the families, this is just awful.
Reporting here is that it was a little league team and children are dead. This happened just a few hours ago. That ramp is an access road that traverses several exits. Not sure how that could have happened as it did. I used to work right at that exit.
This is a real tragedy.
Perhaps brakes out? Prayers for the injured and the families.
This is an extremely dangerous exit. Bus was most likely flying south in HOV lane. Intentionally or not, in the darkness, it took the off & up ramp. That small Stop sign and fast transition distance are probable cause for this tragedy.
Atlanta media is reporting it was a college baseball team from Ohio.
I have traveled I-75 many a time and cannot figure out why the bus would have exited onto Northside Drive. It is not an exit that would provide a travel rest stop.
The gyrations that highway designers have to go through to install these stupid HOV lanes are killing people all over the place. But states are getting free money for building them, so they'll put them in no matter how stupid they are.
We don't know for sure how the bus went off the bridge. It is simply logical it T-Boned the bridge-rail from the HOV exit ramp.
Wonder why they're saying that there? Fox & Friends has been reporting that it was a college baseball team for well over an hour.
I am not familiar with the road in question, but it may be that the bus driver took the exit by mistake, and figured there would be another ramp on the other side to get back onto the highway.
Terrible. Prayers...
I totally forgot about the HOV exit, I think you are right on...that would explain a lot.
This is very true. This same HOV exit ramp has been used as an entrance ramp with deadly results.
Furthermore, Atlanta's mayor Shirley Franklin & Co. are retrofitting inner city roads link Lindberg. Restrictive sides and islands to slow and hinder traffic. It would be funny without fatalities.
Driver sleeping? I played women's basketball in college and I know of one time that we were driven off an exit because the driver was nodding off at midnight. Our assistant coach was awake and paying attention. He started yelling and woke him. No one fell asleep after that.
"Bluffton University"
It most likely stopped at the see-saw point, nosed over, made vertical impact and fell perpendicular blocking I-75.
Live feed here: http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/myfox/
700 WLW in Cincinnati and 1290 WHIO in Dayton are both reporting that this is the Bluffton University Baseball Team.
http://www.bluffton.edu/sports/
Bluffton is a Division III school in the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference (HCAC.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.