41 Injured as L.A. Bus Overturns at Vegas

More than 40 Southern Californians, most of them Latinos, were injured Saturday when their casino-bound tour bus flipped on its side after swerving out of control on a rain-slick interstate highway here.

The Nevada Highway Patrol was investigating the accident for possible mechanical failures. But trooper Rosell Owens said that, “at this time, it appears that the bus driver was not at fault.”

Owens added that investigators were looking for a driver who allegedly cut off the bus and then left the scene. The owner of Scorpio Tours of Los Angeles said late Saturday that his driver told him he lost control of the bus when a car veered in front of him.

Jose Bretado, owner of the 7-month-old, one-bus firm, a low-cost tour bus company that offers $10 overnight trips to Las Vegas, said the bus began to swerve and his driver, Jose Luis Figueroa, turned the coach “to avoid hitting a post . . . that’s when it flipped over.”

Santiago Vega, 31, an Oxnard delivery driver who was on the bus with his wife, said the driver lost control. “He was going all over the freeway,” Vega said.

The bus tipped over on the driver’s side, throwing Vega and his wife, Maria Guadalupe, across the aisle onto other riders. Vega suffered a broken shoulder and his wife suffered neck and shoulder injuries.

Vega said he thought the driver made a mistake in how he responded to the emergency.

“If he was about to hit a car, he should have hit one, but not (risked harming) all the people,” he said. Nonetheless, Vega added, “I feel like the happiest man in the world because your life is what counts.”

The spectacular accident occurred at 4:10 p.m. near a bend in Interstate 15 west of the Circus Circus and Sahara hotel casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. Also involved in the accident was a tractor-trailer rig that was following the bus. The truck fish-tailed and collided with a car, witnesses said.

The victims, who apparently were from the Los Angeles and Santa Barbara areas, were taken to five hospitals. The most seriously injured were rushed to the trauma center at University Medical Center of Southern Nevada. Nursing officials there and at the other hospitals said the victims had suffered bruises and cuts and some were in shock. The most serious injuries were fractured bones and most victims were treated and released, officials said.

There was no warning that the bus was in trouble, witnesses said.

“I just saw a lot of cars getting tangled up (then) a cloud of dust and the bus was in the middle of the cloud . . . then it just went over on its side,” said Clark County firefighter Malcolm Turner.

Another witness, who was traveling a few cars behind the bus, said it “swerved out a little to the left. Then swerved back. The next thing I remember, it was going sideways across the Sahara Avenue exit and then it rolled on its side.”

The bus ended up off the freeway on the off-ramp facing back toward freeway, said the witness. Traffic had been moving about 60 m.p.h. and the “roads were slick,” the witness said.

Many motorists pulled off the interstate to help and “a lot of the injured were literally lined up and waiting for assistance when the ambulances arrived,” said Las Vegas Fire Department paramedic Gary Pung.

“Everything was upside down,” said Craig LaRont, a construction worker who climbed inside the bus to help the victims.

Ann Lindsay, an employee at a nearby U.S. Department of Energy facility who heard the crash, rushed to the scene and helped the bus riders out through an escape hatch in the roof. “We just pulled them out one by one,” Lindsay said.

The Nevada Highway Patrol said all but two of 39 people on the bus were injured, as were four in the car.

Scorpio Tours owner Bretado said the bus picked up customers at several stops throughout Los Angeles County. He said participating casinos subsidize his low-cost tour packages.

The bus operation was arranging for return transportation for the customers after the crash, he added.

Officials said the bus had stopped at Whiskey Pete’s, a state line casino, before heading on to the Thunderbird Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

California tour bus operators, as well the state and federal agencies that regulate them, have come under fire in recent years for safety problems and inadequate enforcement. As regulations have been relaxed to encourage competition, the number of licensed tour bus operators in the state grew from 400 in 1975 to nearly 3,000 in 1986.

In one of the more widely publicized tour bus accidents in recent years, 21 elderly Santa Monica residents were killed in 1986 when a Starline Sightseeing Tour bus plunged into the icy Walker River in Mono County.

Bretado said his firm is fully licensed and his bus was recently inspected by the California Highway Patrol.

Times staff writers Marita Hernandez, James Rainey and Tracey Kaplan contributed to this article.