A school bus crash in Rego Park on Wednesday afternoon sent 15 people, nine children and six adults, to hospitals, according to fire officials. The FDNY said it received a 911 call at about 1:26 p.m. after the wreck near the Long Island Expressway and the Grand Central Parkway at 108th Street, a busy tangle of roadway that quickly snarled neighborhood traffic.
According to Patch, FDNY officials said those on board suffered minor injuries and were transported to local hospitals for evaluation. Emergency crews, including NYPD officers and EMS teams, stayed on scene as investigators worked to clear the roadway and sort out what exactly went wrong.
In a statement to the New York Daily News, schools official Isla Gething said school staff, students and families were being kept informed and that there were no reported student injuries. “NYPD and EMS responded quickly and ensured that everyone was safely escorted away from the scene,” Gething said.
Where victims were taken
At least some of the injured were brought to the area's main public hospital, NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst at 79-01 Broadway, according to local reporting and hospital records. The facility is the nearest major emergency center in central Queens and received patients while crews continued to work the crash site.
Why this matters
According to NYC Open Data, the city's expressways account for a sizable share of injury crashes, and investigators routinely lean on that crash data when weighing probable causes such as speed, road conditions or driver error. The Grand Central Parkway and LIE corridors carry heavy daytime traffic, which can magnify the risk of multi-vehicle collisions when something goes wrong.
Police and FDNY crews remained at the scene into the afternoon while highway investigators and school officials collected information. Authorities had not immediately released the bus operator's name or a definitive cause, Patch reports. Families were contacted by the school, and investigators asked anyone with photos or dashcam footage to share it as they work to piece together the chain of events.
