By Lorna Colquhoun
Union Leader Correspondent
LITTLETON, N.H. — Two young brothers acted as interpreters for the first emergency responders to Monday night’s bus rollover crash on snow-covered Interstate 93, which injured more than a dozen Korean travelers heading to Boston.
“The brothers were 8 and 11 and they really helped out” in the moments after rescue crews arrived on the scene, said State Police Lt. Todd Landry.
The tour bus was southbound on Interstate 93, coming from Quebec en route to Boston when it appeared to slide off the road and roll over on the median between exits 42 and 43 about 8:15 p.m.
The investigation is ongoing, Landry said, and as of Tuesday afternoon, police were continuing to look into “the cause and mitigating factors” that preceded the crash.
“Charges have not been ruled out against the driver,” Landry said.
New Hampshire authorities are working with New Jersey police in the investigation. The tour bus was operated by PRT Tours of Ridgefield, N.J., and was transporting 25 Korean tourists.
At the time of the rollover, less than two miles away, nearly all of the Littleton Fire Department’s 30-member call firefighters were just finishing a meeting, Chief Joe Mercieri said.
“We had more people than we usually have,” he said, noting that typically just two firefighters are on duty.
Moments later, the emergency responders found the bus in the median, but no one stirring outside. Traffic was light, he said, and there were no bystanders or good samaritans.
“We got there soon after it toppled over,” he said. “The people inside were still gathering themselves, probably trying to figure out what happened.”
Crews gained access to the interior of the bus by removing the windshield.
In those first moments of assessing the injured, Landry said, two brothers who are bilingual helped to translate for the rescue workers.
The accident was treated as a mass casualty incident, Merciero said, bringing ambulances from six communities, as far away as Woodsville, Lancaster, Twin Mountain and St. Johnsbury, Vt.
By late Tuesday, all but five passengers were released from the hospital, Mercieri said.
Littleton Regional Hospital treated 15 initially,and two were transferred to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon for further treatment. One person remains hospitalized in stable condition.
Five were brought to Cottage Hospital in Woodsville, where three were treated and released. One remains in satisfactory condition, and one was taken to Dartmouth. At Weeks Medical Center in Lancaster, two were treated and released. Two others were transported to the Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital in St. Johnsbury, Vt.
Accommodations were arranged for the bus passengers at the Littleton Hampton Inn.
Mercieri said there are countless hours of planning and training for a mass casualty incident like the one Monday night.
“The system worked,” he said.
I-93 was closed down for hours after the rollover, and reopened after the bus was removed early Tuesday.
Among the fire and police departments responding to the accident, in addition to Littleton, were Franconia, Bethlehem, Lancaster and Haverhill, as well as Vermont State Police.
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