Seventeen hurt as bus carrying UMass students rolls

By Owen Boss

Staff Writer

Seventeen people were injured Friday afternoon when a tour bus carrying members of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Ski and Board Club rolled over and slid off Interstate 91 in Putney, according to the Vermont State Police.

All 16 passengers who were hurt were released from hospitals Friday night; the bus driver remained in critical condition on Saturday, state police said

The tour bus was one of three that left the university's Amherst campus Friday afternoon for a ski trip to Quebec City, Canada. Vermont State Police Lt. Craig Laporte confirmed that the bus was carrying UMass-Amherst students.

The driver, who may have suffered a heart attack, was airlifted by helicopter to the trauma center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Hanover, N.H., according to state police spokeswoman Stephanie Dasaro.

Vermont State Police said Saturday that the driver remained in critical condition at Dartmouth-Hitchcock. Police declined to release the names of any of the people injured in the crash, including the driver.

At 3:51 p.m. Friday, more than a dozen ambulances from Vermont and New Hampshire responded to the scene after it was reported that a bus owned by Tour World, a Danville, Pa., a company that charters private bus tours, had crossed over the median, rolled over and ended up off the side of the highway's southbound lane, Laporte said.

Laporte said 16 of the 45 passengers aboard were taken by ambulance to hospitals in Brattleboro and Springfield, Vt. The other 28 were uninjured in the crash.

UMass spokesman Ed Blaguszewski said the students involved in the crash were participating in a private ski tour that was not organized by the university.

"This was not a university-organized event and was not done with university vehicles," Blaguszewski said. "This would be the equivalent to a group of students getting on a chartered bus to go to a concert, so we don't have a list of who was on the bus. Our understanding is that a great number of those involved were in fact UMass students."

Seven of the injured were taken to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital with cuts and bruises, and they were treated and released, hospital spokeswoman Barbara Gentry said.

An eighth had a neck injury and was X-rayed, but he, too, was released, she said.

The other eight passengers were taken to Springfield Hospital, where they were treated for minor injuries and released Friday night, according to hospital spokeswoman Mary Ann Bonneville.

Joe Schoppy, owner of Tour World, told the Brattleboro Reformer that the driver of the bus may have suffered a heart attack or anxiety attack and that the bus was almost at a complete stop before it rolled over.

The Vermont State Police Crash Reconstruction Team was still at the scene late Friday night investigating the cause of the accident, Dasaro said.

Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com.