Truckers Save 5 From Fire After Bus Rear-Ends Car; 11 Injured

Eleven people were injured, five of them seriously, when a Greyhound bus collided with a car on the Grapevine on Monday, backing up rush-hour traffic for miles when northbound Interstate 5 was closed for two hours, Kern County Fire officials said.

There would “undoubtedly have been some deaths if five heroic truck drivers hadn’t waded in and pulled the five people out of the burning car,” said Fire Capt. Tom Blackmon.

The car, which had been traveling alongside the bus at Laval near Wheeler Ridge at 5 p.m., “suddenly slowed up and swerved in front of the bus, decelerating suddenly,” Blackmon said. The bus “hit the car in the right rear, possibly right over the filler cap on the gas tank, and it burst into flames,” he said.

“That’s when the truck drivers stopped and waded in right through the flames yanking the passengers out,” Blackmon said. “One young woman they pulled out couldn’t even be seen through the smoke and flames. Then they tried unsuccessfully to put out the flames with their fire extinguishers.” The truckers were not injured.

There were three women and two men in the car and about 20 people on the bus, which was traveling from Los Angeles to Sacramento, officials said. The injured were taken to four Bakersfield hospitals.

“We had only six minor injuries in the bus, two of them small children,” Cody said.

Blackmon described the scene as “looking like a battlefield. We had two air ambulances, three ground ambulances and 15 firefighters putting out the flames.”

Cody said three of the truck drivers--Henry Rangel, Larry Cantrel and Harold King--drive for Petro Transport and are from Bakersfield. The other two, who were not identified, are from Long Beach, he said, adding that hero citations will be sought for all of them.