New York: A charter bus carrying high school students to band camp slid off a New York highway and down an embankment Thursday, killing two adults and seriously injuring several others, authorities said. The bus was one of six in a caravan carrying the marching band, color guard and dancers on the beloved annual trip from Long Island’s Farmingdale High School to a camp in Greeley, northeastern Pennsylvania. According to state police, five of the 44 passengers on board the plane were hospitalized in critical condition. Anthony Eugenio, a 15-year-old student from Farmingdale, was sleeping on the bus when he felt a strong jolt and woke up, wondering if it was a dream or a nightmare. It felt as if the bus was turning. Then he felt himself tripping – he couldn’t remember how many times – as he tried to pull the hood of his sweatshirt over his eyes. “Then everyone was screaming,”
he said. “The child next to me was covered in blood. I saw blood everywhere. He climbed out of the overturned bus through the window, dazed, but only scratched and bruised. Once outside, he finds his backpack, which had been thrown from the debris, and his missing shoe. News helicopter footage showed tire tracks on the road and a path of uprooted grass and bushes on the embankment. Hochul said the bus fell 50 feet down a steep slope into a wide median between the eastbound and westbound lanes of the highway. The bus stopped on the left side, its roof tilted. A ladder allowed rescue workers to reach the windows. A trip to band camp in September is an annual tradition at the suburban high school, which has approximately 1,700 students. Band members, color guard and the school’s kick line team, as well as adult chaperones, also participate. Over the course of a few years, more than 300 students have taken the trip to rural Pennsylvania to practice and have fun. The bus crashed about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from Pine Forest Camp, where the students were visiting. Many of the 40 students on the bus were freshmen, Hochul said. “He endured. They were strong,” she said. Students on other buses returned to Long Island a few hours after the crash. Six area hospitals treated the injured. Anthony Eugenio, who spoke to The Associated Press from the car driving his mother home, said his thought as the bus overturned repeatedly was “This can’t be real.” In Nassau County, where Farmingdale High School is located, County Executive Bruce Blakeman urged people to please “pray for the injured.”
