Norman Searah spent most of his bus ride from Des Moines, Iowa, trying to drone out the chatter of the man next to him. He finally closed his eyes, only to reopen them to a scene he had never imagined.
“Everything around me just went bang,” Searah said.
Forty-one people were injured early Thursday when a Denver-bound bus and two semis crashed on Interstate 80 in Nebraska, according to the Nebraska State Patrol.
Some passengers told reporters that the driver was using a cellphone before the crash, but the Nebraska State Patrol said its initial investigation did not show the phone in use at the time of the crash.
The crash happened about 2 a.m., 2 miles east of the Gibbon exit in central Nebraska. Forty-one people were taken to a hospital in Kearney, including the Burlington Trailways bus driver, who was in critical condition. None of the injuries was considered life-threatening.
The driver, Michelle Anderson, 50, of Omaha, has more than nine years’ experience and about 850,000 accident-free miles, said Dan Ronan of the American Bus Association, a spokesman for Trailways.
Searah, whose left arm was bandaged and bloodied when he arrived in Denver on Thursday afternoon, was sitting three seats behind Anderson, he said. It took crews almost an hour to pry her from the wreckage.
The passengers who were able to travel after the accident arrived in Denver on a charter bus a little after 3 p.m.
Jimmy Strickland, traveling from Florida, walked off the bus pushing a stroller with his infant son in it. He said most of the passengers were sleeping when the accident happened.
“All of the sudden you heard the bus driver scream ‘Oh, my God,’ and boom,” Strickland said. “It just disintegrated. It’s something you wouldn’t expect to see in a lifetime.”
Strickland said he saw Anderson on a cellphone right before the bus crashed.
Two other passengers, Anthony Pavarotti and Heather Howell, told The Associated Press that they also saw the driver on her phone before the crash.
Ronan said drivers are allowed to use their phones to contact other drivers and check on weather and road conditions.
Nebraska State Patrol spokeswoman Deb Collins told AP that the initial investigation showed the cellphone was not in use when the accident happened.
The Nebraska patrol said a westbound semi driven by Mohamed Arguini, 39, of Antioch, Tenn., drifted into the median.
Arguini overcorrected, causing the rig, which was hauling dried cereal, to tip on its side, blocking the highway.
A second semi, driven by Gary Middleswart, 61, of Minden, Neb., clipped the overturned trailer and crashed into a ditch. Middleswart was not injured.
The westbound bus hit the semi that had overturned.
A service dog, belonging to one of the passengers, died in the crash, Ronan said.
Thomas Laulunen, who was traveling from Duluth, Minn., said passengers were calling for the dog immediately after the accident.
Jordan Steffen: 303-954-1794 or jsteffen@denverpost.com
