A double-decker tourist bus careened wildly out of control Friday in San Francisco’s crowded Union Square, hurting 20 people and injuring seven critically.
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The tour bus was travelling at high speed when it lost control and crashed into a cyclist, two pedestrians and a number of cars before smashing into scaffolding of a construction site.
Union Square is one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions with several high-end shops as well as its Union Square Park and skating rink. The tourbus fell onto several cars, decimating construction scaffolding, and trapping passengers and pedestrians under the bus.
The tourbus allegedly hit a bicyclist on the road before colliding into pedestrians, and several other nearby vehicles.
Firefighters had to extricate the two people under the bus as well as one trapped on the top deck, Hayes-White said. “It’s way too early to tell right now”, she said Friday.
Police have launched an investigation but the fire department official said it was not immediately known what went wrong.
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.
City Sightseeing San Francisco chief executive Christian Watts issued a statement by email Saturday, saying that the company is “deeply saddened” by the crash.
A double decker tour bus crashed into a construction site Friday afternoon. “There were still ambulances and fire trucks and paramedics with stretchers coming up”. Wrecked cars were scattered up and down the road. They include four men and two women between 20 and 60 years of age. The incident happened at around 3 p.m.in the 200 block of Stockton near Post Street in Union Square.
He said he and others tried to put up a perimeter to keep tourists and others away from the live electrical lines until authorities arrived.
Union Square was so crowded that John said it was initially hard to divide a number of the injured from the passersby.
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Four people are critically injured while two are considered seriously injured, Andrew said. “It took us awhile to figure out who was who”.
