Los Angeles-area high school students and others aboard a tour bus that was hit head-on by a FedEx truck in Northern California, killing 10 people, never received a pre-trip safety briefing and had to climb through 7-foot-high emergency exit windows after the crash, federal investigators said Tuesday.
The National Transportation Safety Board investigation into the April 10, 2014, crash in Orland pointed to a disparity in safety requirements for tour bus passengers versus other modes of transportation. As a result, the NTSB recommended that federal laws be changed to require pre-trip safety briefings on buses, and to require that tour buses be outfitted with emergency exit doors.
According to the NTSB, emergency exit doors on buses are permitted, but they are not required. The bus involved in the 2014 crash did not have an emergency exit.
“Today’s recommendations … if acted upon, will give motorcoach passengers a level of safety, safety protection that’s comparable to that that is now available to passengers traveling by rail and by air,” NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart said.
An NTSB investigator noted that while trapped inside the burning bus, students and other passengers were forced to stand up to crawl through the elevated emergency exit windows — which runs counter to traditional recommendations that people crawl on the ground during a fire to avoid smoke inhalation.
The investigators noted that three people aboard the bus died of asphyxiation.
The Silverado Stages tour bus carrying the students and chaperones to a tour of Humboldt State University was being driven north on the Golden State (5) Freeway when it was struck by a southbound FedEx big rig whose driver veered off the freeway and crossed a lengthy grass median. The truck struck a Nissan Altima before plowing into the tour bus, which burst into flames.
The California Highway Patrol concluded in May that the FedEx driver, 32- year-old Tim Evans, was at fault for the crash, saying he made an “unsafe turning movement” that took the truck through a grass median and into the northbound lanes of traffic.
CHP investigators said they could not determine whether Evans fell asleep, but noted that he took no evasive maneuvers to avoid the crash. There was also no evidence that he suffered from any medical conditions, according to the CHP.
NTSB investigators reached similar conclusions, saying an autopsy found no evidence of drugs or alcohol, and there was “nothing consistent with the driver being fatigued.”
The investigators, however, could not rule out the possibility that Evans may have fainted or suffered a seizure. They noted that if had simply fallen asleep, he likely would have awoken when the truck veered over the 58- foot-long grassy median. Another FedEx driver who saw Evans earlier in the day told investigators that he looked “clammy and pale,” according to the NTSB.
NTSB investigators concluded that the truck driver became “unresponsive due to an unknown cause which prevented him from controlling his vehicle.”
Federal investigators said the lack of a pre-trip safety briefing — or even emergency evacuation pamphlets that airline passengers typically have at their seats — “led to confusion and panic” among the passengers.
There was also no adequate lighting or safety in the bus, leading to “delays in the evacuation.”
The NTSB recommendations will be forwarded to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
“We urge both regulators to act on today’s new recommendations, but it is troubling that in this report, the NTSB has also had to reiterate several recommendations to NHTSA, some quite old,” Hart said. “We reiterated that emergency exits should be easy to open and should remain open, that motorcoaches should have emergency lighting fixtures with an independent power source and that motorcoach emergency exits should be marked with luminescent and/or exterior retro-reflective material.
“By law, the NTSB can only recommend that NHTSA require these safety improves. Now it’s up to NHTSA to require them,” he said.
Evans and the driver of the tour bus both died in the crash. In addition to the 10 people who died, 39 others were injured.
Those killed in the crash were:
— Michael Myvett and Mattison Haywood, who were serving as chaperones on the trip and had gotten engaged during a December 2013 trip to Paris;
— Denise Gomez and Ismael Jimenez, the reigning homecoming queen and king at Animo Charter High School in Inglewood;
— Jennifer Bonilla, a Los Angeles Dorsey High School honor student who had won a college scholarship and was considered a campus leader by school administrators;
— Adrian Castro, a popular El Monte High School football player who fellow students referred to as a positive role model;
— Marisa Serrato, a church-going student at Norte Vista High School in Riverside, and whose identical twin, Marisol, made the trip on a different bus and was not injured;
— bus driver Talalelei Lealao-Taiao;
— chaperone Arthur Arzola, 26, of Rancho Cucamonga, who was a college recruiter helping to lead the excursion to Humboldt State; and
— Evans, a lifelong resident of the Sacramento area who had married his high school sweetheart, fathered two daughters and helped coach their soccer and softball teams.
—Staff and wire reports