Nevada Tour Bus Crash a Nightmare, Victims Say

John Brown remembers that his tour bus full of British tourists zigged and zagged like “a Walt Disney ride” before flipping on its side and coming to a screeching halt in the middle of Nevada’s high desert.

“It’s a nightmare,” he told reporters Friday at Washoe Medical Center in Reno, about 200 miles north of the crash site near Tonopah, Nevada. All 41 people aboard were injured, some seriously.

Twenty-two people remained hospitalized Friday, including Brown’s 44-year-old wife, Audrey. She was in satisfactory condition with face and shoulder injuries after being dragged along the ground as the bus slid 200 feet on its side.

The Nevada Highway Patrol blamed Thursday’s crash on “driver inattention.”

A 72-year-old woman from Derby, England, lost both her arms. She and five others who were seriously injured were the first airlifted to hospitals 200 miles away--north to Reno and south to Las Vegas.

“We were looking forward to the trip on to Hawaii. But I only care that we’re not dead. We’re alive,” said Brown, 47.

Five people remained in serious condition Friday in hospitals in Reno and Las Vegas.

The tourists had flown from London to San Francisco, where they started the bus leg of the tour, traveling to Los Angeles and Las Vegas. They were headed north again Thursday for Mammoth Lakes, Calif., when the bus went off U.S. 6, a two-lane road in remote central Nevada.

The driver overcorrected his steering to the left, and the bus traveled across both lanes and went off the left side of the road, authorities said. The driver again overcorrected, and the bus overturned and slid for about 200 feet on its side.

Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Richard James said an investigation was continuing but no drugs or alcohol were involved and speed was not believed to be a factor either. “We’re pretty much focusing on driver error,” he said.

Brown, from Scotland, said the driver’s side was sliding on its side “and passengers were being dragged physically along the side, which resulted in horrific injuries. I never thought I was really going to be injured. At that point, it was something like in a carnival, a Walt Disney ride where you go up and down but you survive.”

Once the bus stopped, people were crying, he said, adding: “Everybody was trying to console each other. We knew we had to get people out of the bus.”

The driver, Lotfali Rankouh of Los Angeles, suffered minor injuries.

The bus was registered to California Sun Lines Inc. in

“He has a perfect record,” said Reza Olandj with California Sun Lines.