Seven American Children Killed

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32352, 18 July 1970, Page 20

Seven American Children Killed

(N.Z. Pre»s Association—Copyright) ALLENTOWN (Pennsylvania), July 16. A chartered bus carrying schoolchildren skidded in a rainstorm and rolled over an embankment yesterday, killing seven children and an adult and injuring 52 persons.

The roof and the side of the bus ripped open, tossing many children out over the embankment About six people were pinned beneath the bus, which was on a tour of the Pennsylvania Amish country, and others were trapped inside. “Most of the kids who were pinned under the bus were dead,” a State trooper, Mr Robert Clarson, one of the first persons at the scene, said. “It was a mess. There were children all over—on the embankment, in the grass, in the bus. The last girl that they got out that was alive was pinned under the bus. 1 understand she had lost a leg.” The bus, carrying children from the Hillel School, a private Jewish day school in Lawrence, a wealthy New York suburb, skidded on a slight curve, 10 miles west of Allentown. Child’s Description One of the children, Daniel Steinberg, aged 11, of Far Rockaway, New York, said that the bus went into a spin, “rotating around me.” “It went side to side down the hill,” he said, “and when it stopped I looked and saw a little hole to the left of me, a foot wide, and I and about six others Crawled through the hole.”

Anguished parents went to the school in Lawrence, when they were told about the crash. Many of them just wandered aimlessly through the corridors.

Some of the parents went straight to Allentown. They took cars, commercial airlines, and a small commuter aircraft to get there. The National Safety Board said in Washington, D.C., that one of its top highway safety experts, Anthony Schmeig, was dispatched to the scene.