STUDENTS HURT IN HORROR BUS SMASH
A GROUP of staff and students are lucky to be alive after a truck crashed into their school bus, forcing it down an embankment in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria.
Dozens of students and staff from Loreto College Ballarat were rushed to hospital after a truck collided with their school bus on the Western Highway at 3.15am on Wednesday.
The bus was heading to Melbourne Airport where the year 9 to 11 students were travelling to the US to
attend a space camp that had been rescheduled due to Covid.
There were 27 female students, four teachers and the bus driver onboard.
Ambulance Victoria said paramedics treated more than 30 people with “traumatic injuries”, including the male truck driver, who sustained serious injuries.
Two teenager girls were flown to the Royal Children’s Hospital in a serious but stable condition.
A woman in her 40s and a man in his 50s were taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital in a serious but stable condition with injuries, along with a teenage girl with upper body injuries.
A woman aged in her 40s was taken to Sunshine Hospital in a stable condition with upper body injuries, along with two teenage girls in a stable condition with minor injuries.
Detective Inspector Roger Schranz described the crash as a parent’s “worst nightmare”.
“It must have been horrific for the students, but just as horrific for their parents,” he said.
“It was quite chaotic, with people self-evacuating (from the bus), witnesses around and bumper-tobumper traffic.”
The cause of the crash is still unknown, but the investigation will consider speed, drugs, alcohol and fatigue as part of their inquiries.