Eight people are now confirmed dead after a semi-truck with a blown tire collided head-on with a Greyhound bus on an interstate highway in western New Mexico on Thursday, authorities said Friday.
In a Friday news conference, New Mexico State Police Chief Pete Kassetas called the eight fatalities "tragic." More lives may have been lost, he said, without the help of passing motorists, several of whom stopped at the crash site in the median of the highway to help extricate people from the bus, provide basic medical help, and drive people to local hospitals.
"I believe they're heroes, as far as what they did," Kassetas said. "They stopped and wasted no time extracting individuals out of the bus, administering first-aid. And I believe that saved lives."
The stretch of the interstate where the crash occurred was in the middle of a rural area with spotty cellphone service. At one point, Kassetas said, first responders ran out of ambulances on-sight to transport people to hospitals.
Kassetas said the collision was "the worst encounter" seen by the state's lead crash reconstruction specialist.
"It's been very difficult," Kassetas said. "These officers are highly trained, but they're human."
The driver of the truck, whose name has not been released, suffered non-life-threatening injuries. The driver of the Greyhound bus, 49-year-old Luis Alvarez, was killed in the crash, along with seven other passengers. The bus was traveling from St. Louis to Los Angeles, with multiple stops along the way.
According to state police, the crash occurred because the tread of the left front tire of the truck came apart, which caused the driver to lose control and sent the truck careening through the 50-foot grass median and colliding with the westbound bus on the other side.
"Once it jack-knives, there's absolutely no controlling it," Kassetas said. "It's an 80,000-pound projectile."
Kassetas said it is unclear what caused the tire to fail, but possible factors could include manufacturing defects, the age and condition of the tire, or the heat of the road.
"We just don't know yet," Kassetas said, adding that officials have not determined what speed the truck was traveling when the blowout occurred.
Police are inspecting the truck, along with the bus. The National Transportation Safety Board has sent 10 investigators to the scene of the collision.
The crash caused a traffic backup on the highway that stretched for more than 10 miles, New Mexico State Police Officer Ray Wilson told reporters Thursday.
Video of the crash scene shared by local TV news stations showed the truck on its side on the median of the highway, with boxes of vegetables strewn over the grass. The Greyhound bus remained right-side-up, but with the front of the bus obliterated. Further back, a window was knocked out, through which passengers from the bus escaped down ladders.
"Everything's such a mess down there," Wilson said, describing scene. When officers arrived at the site of the collision, he said, "it was chaos."
