ORLAND, Calif. (AP) — The long ride north from Los Angeles for a group of high school students who planned to visit Humbolldt State University had been fun: The hours whizzed by as they watched movies, chatted up new friends and jammed to hip-hop on the radio.
Like most of the bus’s dozens of young passengers on the verge of high school graduation, Steven Clavijo, 18, a senior at West Ranch High in Santa Clarita, was looking forward to his visit to Humboldt State’s campus — where he already planned to enroll in the fall — and to his future.
But suddenly Thursday afternoon, just as Clavijo was trying to catch a nap, he said he felt the big vehicle begin to shake from left to right.
A FedEx tractor-trailer had crossed a grassy freeway median and slammed into the bus. At least nine were killed in the fiery crash, authorities said.
“I just heard this loud boom,” he said. “We knew we were in major trouble.”
Many escaped through a window that someone had kicked open, Clavijo said, running for their lives to the other side of the freeway before hearing an explosion and seeing the bus burst into flame.
PHOTOS: Truck in deadly crash slammed into charter bus
As he jumped out of the window, Clavijo said, he dropped his glasses and scraped his knee.
Two more explosions soon followed, he said, as he and other survivors looked on at his friends still trapped in an inferno.
Massive flames could be seen devouring both vehicles just after the crash, and clouds of smoke billowed into the sky until firefighters had quenched the fire, leaving behind scorched black hulks of metal. Bodies were draped in blankets inside the burned-out bus.
CHP Officer Lacy Heitman said the driver of the tractor-trailer was among the dead. CHP dispatchers initially said the bus driver also died, but Heitman said investigators were working to identify the eight victims on the bus, which carried between 44 and 48 students, four chaperones and the driver.
The crash happened a little after 5:30 p.m. on Interstate 5 near Orland, a small city about 100 miles north of Sacramento.
The bus was one of two that the admissions office at Humboldt State University had chartered to bring prospective students from Southern California to tour the Arcata campus, Humboldt’s Vice President of Administrative Affairs Joyce Lopes said.
The bus was owned by Silverado Stages, a tour bus company based in San Luis Obisbo. The company said in a statement on its website Thursday night that it was assisting authorities in gathering information.
“Our top priority is making sure that the injured are being cared for,” Silverado Stages said.
Humboldt State’s President Rollin Richmond issued a statement on the school’s website. “Our hearts go out to those who have been affected, and we are here to support them, and their families, in any way possible,” Richmond said.
Humboldt State spokesman Simon Chabel said the school was working to confirm where in Southern California the students on the wrecked bus are from.
“There is still a lot of information to be gathered, and we are working as hard as we can to gather that information and communicate it as best as we can to parents and other family members during this terrible tragedy,” he said.
Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy said an unknown number of students from Manual Arts Senior High School and Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools were on the trip. He did not know whether they were on the bus involved in the crash.
A high school senior from Alliance Renee & Meyer Luskin Academy High School in Los Angeles said she and a few of her classmates who were accepted to the university were invited to go on the tour.
Sabrina Garcia said the tour began Thursday, with buses taking students in Southern California on the ride to the campus for a three-day stay there. She said she decided to postpone the tour because she had a school project to complete.
“I was devastated when I heard about the crash, and relieved that I didn’t attend,” Garcia said. “I can’t imagine how those kids feel. You think you’re going somewhere safe with your school — and you end up in an accident.”
A CHP dispatcher says the bus and truck were on opposite sides of the freeway when the truck crossed the median and slammed into the bus, causing an explosion and fire.
Investigators say the truck driver might have been trying to avoid a passenger car that was also involved in the crash, which shut down north- and south-bound traffic on the freeway.
“There was a small white sedan in front of the truck,” Heitman of the CHP said. “The FedEx vehicle did sideswipe the sedan before it crossed the median.”
A first responder who helped set up a triage at the scene said 36 or 37 people received injuries ranging from severe to minor burns, broken legs and noses and head lacerations.
“The victims were teenage kids. A lot of them were freaked out. They were shocked. They still couldn’t grasp what happened,” Jason Wyman with the Orland Volunteer Fire Department said.
Wyman said he was first focused on putting out the fire, and once it was under control he saw dozens of people walking wounded.
“The first victim that was taken out of the bus was severely burned,” Wyman said.
A mother of identical twin girls from Norte Vista High School in Riverside told KNBC-TV her daughters traveled on two different buses, and that one of them was on the bus involved in the crash. The tearful mother spoke in Spanish and told the station she felt sad and desperate as she tried to learn about the other daughter’s fate.
Nine people were taken to Enloe Medical Center in Chico, hospital spokeswoman Christina Chavira said. Two of those patients were listed in critical condition, two in fair condition, and six were in undetermined condition as of 10 p.m. Thursday, said Denise Atkinson, an Enloe nursing supervisor.
Another five were taken to Mercy Medical Center in Redding in fair condition.
One patient was admitted to the burn unit of University of California, Davis, Medical Center in critical condition.
A nursing supervisor said three people were taken to Oroville Hospital in Oroville. She declined to describe their conditions, citing patient privacy laws.
Bonnie Kourvelas, a FedEx spokeswoman, said in a statement Thursday night: “Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone involved in the tragic accident on I-5 in California. We are cooperating fully with authorities as they investigate.”
The American Red Cross set up a relief station at a Veterans Memorial Hall community center in Orland, Calif., about five miles from the crash site. Officer Joel Lynch said seven kids who were not hospitalized with injuries are staying there tonight with about 25 volunteers. Outside more than a dozen packs of bottled water and energy drinks and packages of potato chips were left for students. A community member had ordered pizza for the students.
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Joseph reported from San Francisco. Associated Press Photographer Rick Pedroncelli in Orland, Associated Press Writers Lisa Leff in San Francisco and Daisy Nguyen and Tami Abdollah in Los Angeles contributed to this story.
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