A passenger bus and a VW Jetta have collided head on, at the corners of Black Reef and Dekema roads in Wadeville this morning.
It was shortly after 7am that paramedics responded to the call for emergency assistance at the accident. A fully laden passenger bus, transporting school children between the ages of four and 14, crashed head on into a VW Jetta, which was occupied by four men believed to have been in their late fourties.
Rescuers and paramedics arrived on scene to find the school children had all climbed through the front windshield of the bus and were seated near the wreckage or walking around the area. Including the driver, there had been 72 people in the bus at the time of the accident, and they had all suffered minor injuries except one 14 year old girl who had suffered moderate injuries.
23 of the patients were loaded into a second passenger bus, and they were taken to a predetermined central point which was Germiston hospital. The remaining 49 passengers of the bus were taken to hospitals by ambulance.
Two of the men in the Jetta had been flung out of the vehicle following the impact. One of the men died at the scene, having been found lying a short distance from the wreckage. The other man was found to have suffered critical injuries and was found with half of his body still inside the car with the rest hanging out of one of the windows. The back passenger had also been killed in the collision, and he was trapped inside the wreckage, where the Fire Department would use the Jaws of Life to remove his remains. The driver of the Jetta was also in a critical condition, and he required Advanced Life Support treatment.
The two critically injured patients were rushed to hospital by ambulance for further urgent medical care.
The children in the school bus were all in school uniform, believed to have been on their way to various schools in the greater Germiston, Primrose area.
The cause of the collision is not know, and will be investigated by the relevant officials.
[Reporting from ER24]
