Fire Engine, Bus Collide; Man Killed

A tour bus crowded with senior citizens from Los Angeles collided with a fire engine Tuesday morning on busy Interstate 10 in Ontario, killing one passenger, injuring three firefighters and sending dozens of others to area hospitals.

Most of the injured were passengers who boarded the bus in L.A.’s Chinatown or the San Gabriel Valley on their way to Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Indio. Some, on fixed incomes, were taking the trip just to collect $10 in free casino chips, passengers said.

The 75-year-old Rosemead man who died in the collision had been sitting in the front row of the bus, which was so mangled that firefighters used the “jaws of life” to extricate five passengers, a witness said. The man killed was Kau Leung, a well-known retired Cantonese chef in Chinatown, his family said.

The California Highway Patrol shut down the San Bernardino Freeway in both directions for almost four hours after the 7:30 a.m. collision, creating a traffic nightmare for thousands of commuters, who watched as ambulances and at least two helicopters arrived to take the injured to hospitals.

“We had 50-something injured people on the bus, fellow firefighters we know and work with who were hurt ... gridlock, with the freeway shut down, people landing helicopters and staging ambulance pickups,” said Deputy Chief Bob Snow of the Ontario Fire Department. “It was ... something nobody ever wants to respond to.”

The accident occurred when an Upland Fire Department engine responding to an earlier accident, directly across the freeway divider in the opposing shoulder, tried to merge into the eastbound carpool lane just past the 4th Street exit, colliding with the bus, said Highway Patrol Officer Lee Nuez.

The bus, operated by H & C Paradise Tour, Inc. of Los Angeles, skidded to a stop against the concrete median. The firetruck, its front cab smashed, veered across four lanes of traffic and slammed into a concrete barrier on the right shoulder, leaving its fire hose unraveled across the eastbound lanes.

“Fault is unknown,” said CHP spokesman Tony Nguyen.

The fire engine had its emergency lights on before the collision, but it was not clear whether its siren was activated, and the bus driver was traveling “normal freeway speed,” Nguyen said.

In explaining why the fire engine was trying to position itself on the other side of the freeway divider from the earlier accident, Dave Schuler of the Ontario Fire Department, incident commander for the second accident, said it was often difficult for rescuers to reach freeway accident scenes because drivers “don’t always afford us the space we need to get over, and in some cases they aren’t paying attention.”

“We know, in this case, there was an accident on the other side of the freeway,” Schuler said. “Maybe the bus driver’s eyes were diverted by that.”

An attorney for the bus company said company officials were told that the firetruck hit the bus when it merged into the carpool lane.

“We believe there was no siren on,” said the attorney, Damian Morozumi, based in San Francisco.

The driver of the Upland fire engine, fire engineer Tom Barilla of Rancho Cucamonga, suffered trauma to the face along with head, chest and abdominal injuries. Barilla, 40, was in critical condition at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, said hospital Medical Director Dev Gnanadev.

Barilla, who has been with the department more than a decade, was Upland’s Firefighter of the Year last year and is married with two young daughters, said his brother Mike, a Pasadena fire paramedic.

“It’s our normal routine to help others,” his brother said during a press conference at the hospital. “It’s rare to need help ourselves. We become victims like anyone else -- and we hope to be treated like anyone else.”

Two other firefighters on the engine who were injured immediately began treating Barilla, authorities said. They suffered minor injuries and were released Tuesday afternoon, a hospital official said.

An unidentified 70-year-old man who was a passenger on the bus was also in critical condition at Arrowhead, with abdominal and bone injuries, another hospital official said.

At least 54 of the 58 people on the bus were taken to six area hospitals with minor to moderate injuries. The most badly injured were sent to Arrowhead or Loma Linda University Medical Center, authorities said.

The CHP said the bus driver was Nam Jae Chung, 51, of Lakewood, who was hospitalized at the Loma Linda center.

Paramedics and police described the scene on the bus as “chaotic,” with elderly Chinese and Vietnamese passengers thrown into the aisles or staying in their seats and quietly weeping.

Thuan Nguyen, 55, of Los Angeles said he boarded the bus in Chinatown just before 7 a.m. and took a seat in the third row. When the bus and fire engine collided, glass was flying everywhere and passengers, some trapped in the wreckage, were screaming in agony, he said.

“It looked like the sky came down on us,” Nguyen said. “Everything in front of me was broken and mangled.... I felt like my neck broke and I was going to die.”

He suffered bruises, cuts and a broken wrist, and was being treated at the Loma Linda medical center’s emergency room. “I was lucky.”

Loc Nguyen, 42, a grocery stocker from El Monte, said he was sitting in the middle of the bus chatting with a stranger when he saw the firetruck about seven feet in front of the bus, at an angle, with its lights and siren on.

He stood up to see what was happening, then the vehicles collided, sending him into a window. Nguyen was taken to the Loma Linda center for head, neck and chest injuries.

“We braked so fast, so sudden. No one had seat belts on,” he said. “I thought I was going to die.”

Nguyen and others on the bus said some passengers were retired and on fixed incomes, and take the trips just to collect $10 in free chips they receive when they arrive at the casino. Those passengers don’t gamble, they said.

H & C Paradise Tour has a five-bus interstate fleet and eight drivers, and is in compliance with federal regulations, said a spokesman for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The company has had no safety problems that warrant review, said agency spokesman Bill Macleod.

The attorney for H & C said the company had been operating since 1997. The crash occurred on a charter bus that brings patrons to casinos daily. He described the passengers as predominantly Chinese and Vietnamese, many of them “walk-ons.”

The bus made three stops in the Los Angeles area, including the intersection of Ord Street and Broadway in Chinatown. It was scheduled to return by 1:30 p.m.

The company has not had an accident “like this,” Morozumi said. The crash shook up company staff, including the president, Linna Huie, who was not available for comment.

“She’s never had anything like this happen before, and she is very upset,” Morozumi said.

Leung, the bus passenger who was killed, worked hard to bring his whole family to the United States in the late 1970s, according to his son Kevin, a Los Angeles Times copy editor.

“He really was full of life,” the son said. “He always had a big smile for everyone, including strangers.”

His father retired about 10 years ago after working at several restaurants. For many years he was head chef at Miriwa, on Hill Street in Chinatown.

“He tried to be inventive,” the son said. He was “a classic American story, just like millions of immigrants before him.”

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Times staff writers Seema Mehta, David Reyes, Susannah Rosenblatt and Mai Tran contributed to this report.