Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Copyright 2007 Little Rock Newspapers, Inc.
FORREST CITY, Ark. — An accident involving a passenger bus, a tractor-trailer rig and a pickup on Interstate 40 near Forrest City around 10 p.m. Sunday left an unknown number of people dead.
Capt. Jimmy Sandage with the Forrest City Fire Department said, “In my 13 years of doing this, this is the worst” accident he had ever seen.
A dispatcher with the Arkansas State Police in Forrest City said the 10:08 p.m. crash trapped about a dozen people in the wreckage of the bus. There were no confirmed fatalities as of 11:30 p.m. and 25 people were uninjured, the dispatcher said.
One official at the scene who asked not to be identified said there were at least three dead.
It was not known how many people were in the bus, but witnesses said it was either full or close to full.
The bus crossed the median and struck a tractor-trailer rig, witnesses said.
Witnesses said the bus, which was headed west at the time of the accident, originated in Chicago. It was loaded with children and adults headed to Mexico, they said.
The bus was split open and riders were trapped inside for a time. A reporter observed bodies on the ground around the vehicle. One of those was covered with an orange and brown blanket.
The area smelled of diesel fuel, and glass from broken windows on the bus littered the area, along with fast-food wrappers. The emergency exit door was ripped off the bus and lying crumpled in the median.
A steady stream of ambulances began arriving at the scene and departing with injured travelers. One man was lying on a stretcher board, the skin of one arm scraped off. He had only one shoe and was crying out for someone to help him find the other one. A woman with an injured arm couldn’t carry her baby who was crying.
A nearby hospital activated its emergency plan and called in extra help. The injured were being transported to hospitals all over the region. The Memphis Fire Department alone sent six ambulances. A crew of people were trying to extricate the injured and possibly additional dead from the wreckage of the bus.
Information for this article was contributed by Frank Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.