2 Dead, 43 Injured in Tour Bus Crash
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BIG PINE, Calif. — Two German tourists were killed and 43 others injured Friday when a tour bus heading from Las Vegas to Mammoth Lakes careened off a desert highway in the Owens Valley, the California Highway Patrol said.
The bus was westbound on Highway 168, about four miles east of Big Pine, when the driver lost control on a downgrade and went off the road, CHP Sgt. Ray Dixon said.
Rescuers arrived to find injured victims waiting dazed along the road, witnesses said. The injured were taken to Northern Inyo Hospital in Bishop, about 14 miles north of Big Pine.
The bus is operated by Southwest Charter Co. of Phoenix, Ariz.
In 1986, the nation’s second-worst bus accident occurred on a mountain canyon highway about 100 miles north of Friday’s accident. That crash, which killed 21 and injured 22 others, many of them residents of a Santa Monica retirement home, occurred when a Starline Sightseeing Tours bus veered off U.S. 395 and into the West Walker River.
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