A bus full of Girl Scouts from around the country and Europe apparently lost its brakes on a winding road and tumbled down a boulder-strewn slope, killing at least seven people, authorities said.
Dozens more were hurt in the accident Wednesday that reduced the bus to a mangled wreck. Doctors had to crawl through the crumpled vehicle to treat teenagers trapped inside. Helicopters took the most seriously hurt to hospitals."It's the absolute worst, it's the absolute saddest thing that could happen," said Mayor Sonny Bono, who helped carry stretchers from Wednesday's wreck.
Most of the 55 people aboard the bus were Girls Scouts specially selected to take part in a two-week tour of Southern California, officials said.
Four teenagers, the driver and two adult chaperones were killed, said Riverside County Deputy Coroner Mike Werk.
Hospitals reported admitting 34 people, most with head injuries and severe cuts. Ten were reported in critical condition, including one in a coma.
The yellow school bus flipped as many as 10 times, said police Sgt. Ron Starrs. It ended up about 25 yards from the road, its nose smashed against a huge boulder. The front end was splintered, the driver's seat exposed.
"The ones who could walk were quietly consoling each other at the top of the hill," said Dr. Daniel Cosgrove, one of the first on the scene.
Cellular phones on the bus may have prevented greater loss of life by enabling people to call for help quickly, he said.
It had been raining off and on throughout the day in Palm Springs, about 100 miles east of Los Angeles, but Starrs said the road apparently was dry at the time of the afternoon crash.
"We're still leaning toward faulty brakes that caused the bus to speed and that caused it to fail to make the turn," Starrs said.
A team from the National Transportation Safety Board was sent to investigate.
The bus was part of a caravan of two buses and two vans carrying a total of 104 girls, ages 15 to 18, and 23 adults on the "California Dreamin' " tour, said Sharon Hewitt, spokeswoman for the Pomona-based Spanish Trails Girl Scout Council, the event's sponsor.
The girls were returning after a tram ride on Mount San Jacinto, which towers over this desert resort.
The cadets from 20 states and Finland were selected from among 600 applicants, she said. Four of the girls were from Califonia and four were from Finland's Girl Guides, the equivalent of the Girl Scouts, she said.
One of the injured was Vachelle Sanders, 15, of Oilton, Okla."She is just badly bruised. She's real shook up emotionally," her mother, Yvonne Marquez, said by telephone from her home. "But Vachelle's OK."
The driver was identified as Richard A. Gonzales, 23, of Bloomington, Calif.
Werk identified one of the dead as Laurel McDaniel, 30, a chaperone from Norcross, Ga. Among the Girl Scouts killed were Vicki Powell, 15, of Fairburn, Ga.; Zoe Jackson, 15, of Sangerville, Maine; and Tammie Murray, 15, of Detroit, Werk said.
Tammie's mother, Edna Murray, an aide to Detroit City Councilman David Eberhard, said she received a call from Palm Springs Desert Hospital.
"They called to tell me she died," Murray said. "She was my youngest of five children."
The names of the other victims were being withheld until parents were notified.