It happened around 3 p.m. Friday.
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“Everybody was asking what’s going on”, said Emam, a Bay Area resident in San Francisco on personal business. Witnesses said it rushed across two city blocks, hitting the bicyclist, the pedestrians and striking several moving automobiles before ramming into the scaffolding. They include four men and two women between 20 and 60 years of age.
Six people were in critical condition, 12 were transported to area hospitals with various injuries and two were treated on the scene, said San Francisco Police Sgt. Michael Andraychak.
From live footage on the scene it appears multiple vehicles were involved in the crash with several wedged against the scaffolding by the bus, and a second open-air tour bus next to the one that crashed.
Andraychak said it was too soon in the police investigation to know whether the driver, who was among those injured in the crash, could face criminal charges.
The license for the company that operates the bus, City Sightseeing, was revoked in 2013, according to the Chronicle.
San Francisco fire chief now says 20 people were injured, 5 of them critically.
Twenty people were hurt, six critically, when the big blue bus with at least 30 people aboard raced through one of the city’s most popular tourist destinations Friday afternoon, leaving chaos and carnage in its wake. The scaffolding collapsed onto the sidewalk.
KRON-TV producer Shannon Adams says she saw the double-decker bus careening down the street at high speed before it hit several cars and smashed into scaffolding at a construction site.
Firefighters had to extricate the two people under the bus as well as one trapped on the top deck, Hayes-White said.
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The bus also knocked down several power lines used to propel the city’s fleet of electrical buses.
