All around him, people were screaming. The front of the bus was “like an accordion,” he said. A truck outside was on fire. He kicked the emergency door open and jumped out.
“Everyone was piling out the windows,” he said. “It was like a battle scene. People were screaming, crying, pulling out their hair. Everyone was bloodied. My clothes were covered in blood.”
Mr. Hoyt was among the 43 high school students from urban corners of Southern California — Torrance, El Monte, South Los Angeles — who had boarded the bus bound for another world: They had been accepted to Humboldt State University, a countryside college in California’s northern reaches, and were headed there for a recruiting visit. Many would be the first members of their family to attend college.
California School Officials on Bus Crash Earl Perkins and Tom Waldman of the Los Angeles
Unified School District discussed the steps the district will take following the bus crash.
Then, as the bus rolled north past Sacramento on Thursday evening, the long trip turned tragic in a violent instant. A FedEx tractor-trailer jumped a grassy divider and barreled into the bus, killing 10 people, including both drivers. As metal and glass crashed around them, the panicked teenagers escaped through windows and ran to safety along the highway. The front of the bus exploded in flames and filled with smoke. Five students and three of their chaperones did not make it out alive. More than 30 other passengers were injured.
Mr. Hoyt said a group of terrified students ran across the freeway and watched, helpless, as flames and charcoal-gray smoke engulfed the bus, where friends and classmates remained trapped.
“I’m so grateful I’m alive,” Mr. Hoyt said. “I was in the back. One of my buddies that I had just met, he was up front. I’m sure he didn’t make it. The chaperone and his fiancée, they didn’t make it.”
Mr. Hoyt was taken to Glenn Medical Center, where he spent the night and was released Friday afternoon.
Photo
A banner outside El Monte High School for one of the students who was aboard the charter bus involved in Thursday’s collision. Credit
Monica Almeida/The New York Times
The students involved in the accident were taking part in Preview Plus, an annual program in which Humboldt State provides transportation and lodging to allow hundreds of disadvantaged students who have been accepted to the university to visit the campus. The bus was one of three chartered by Humboldt State to bring high school students to the campus on Thursday.
Jarad Petroske, a university spokesman, said the program, which dates to the 1990s, is for students from the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas, particularly those from low-income homes.
It coincides with the university’s annual spring preview, held Friday, which has events for prospective students and their families.
“The weekend will proceed as planned,” Mr. Petroske said. “It’ll be taking on a more somber tone, of course. Everybody on campus is devastated.”
Aboard the buses that did arrive Thursday, many of the students and chaperones had already learned of the tragedy on their phones. That night, the university’s president, Rollin C. Richmond, met with them, explained what he knew about what had happened and offered support services.
Larry Jones, the sheriff and coroner of Glenn County, where the accident took place in the town of Orland, said the crash could be heard from a quarter-mile away.
“This was a horrific collision,” Sheriff Jones said. He added that a fire “with very high temperatures” broke out almost immediately after the impact.
As news of the crash reached them, parents streamed north to collect their shellshocked children.
Photo
The tearful family members of another student were escorted from the American Red Cross shelter in Orland. Credit
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
At the American Red Cross shelter established at the Veterans Memorial Hall Community Center in Orland, where some surviving students spent a sleepless night, four students were waiting Friday morning to be picked up by their families. Families that had been unable to determine their children’s whereabouts also went to the center for information. Shortly after three members of one family arrived at the center, anguished wailing could be heard from inside. Less than an hour later, they left the center in tears.
Other students escaped with injuries ranging from smoke inhalation and burns to lacerations and broken teeth.
Mitchell Huezo said his 18-year-old niece, Angela Corro, had been a passenger on the bus. She was in stable condition and receiving treatment for smoke inhalation, he said.
“She couldn’t talk,” Mr. Huezo said. “She can’t really breathe because she inhaled so much smoke.”
Dan Reidel/Chico Enterprise Record, via Reuters
Highway Patrol on California Bus Crash
A California Highway Patrol spokeswoman, Lacey Heitman, gave updates following a deadly collision between a FedEx tractor-trailer and a chartered bus carrying high school students in Orland, Calif.
The authorities and family members confirmed the names of a few of the dead. The three chaperones were Arthur Arzola, a recruiter for Humboldt State, and Mattison Haywood and Michael Myvett, whose families told reporters that they were a couple who had recently become engaged.
Mr. Myvett and Ms. Haywood met in 2006, and Mr. Myvett graduated from Humboldt State the next year. After becoming engaged in Paris at Christmas, the couple were returning to the place where their relationship blossomed.
Mr. Myvett worked as a therapist for the Center for Autism and Related Disorders in Torrance for two years, helping children with life skills and behavior. His death has devastated his co-workers, said Sarah Cho, the center’s corporate director of operations.
“He was very bubbly and positive, even on the most challenging days,” she said. “With kids with autism, sometimes they have a bad day. And Michael was always able to be positive with those kids and those families.”
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