Bus MCI Floods N.Y. System With Nearly 60 Casualties

Syracuse.com

An Upstate University Hospital official described the scene inside the emergency department as “organized chaos” when 30 people injured in a Thruway bus crash began arriving Saturday afternoon in ambulances.

Most of the patients, ranging from young kids to people in their 60s, did not speak English and had to be registered under alias names.

People with minor injuries treated at Upstate and released late Saturday had no way to get home to Dutchess County. So Upstate put them up in the lobby of its Cancer Center, which it transformed into a makeshift hotel with cots and food provided by the American Red Cross. By late Sunday the people camped out in the lobby were moved to hotels or got rides home.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Dr. Robert Corona, the hospital’s CEO. “Patients were really scared and stressed out.”

All 57 passengers and the driver of the bus sustained non-life-threatening injuries when the bus en route to Niagara Falls rolled over at about 12:41 p.m. on the westbound side of the Thruway near Exit 40 at Weedsport.

Auburn Community Hospital took 28 of the bus crash victims, 20 of whom were released Saturday and Sunday. It transferred seven patients to Upstate and one to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester. Crouse Hospital in Syracuse also took three patients.

Corona praised Auburn and Crouse for their cooperation in responding to the incident. “We all operated like a seamless hospital system,” he said.

Upstate called in about 50 extra employees to handle Saturday’s mass casualty incident. They included trauma surgeons and other doctors, nurses and administrators. Auburn called in more than 30 extra healthcare providers to respond to the surge.

Some patients at Upstate needed surgery. Others suffered fractured ribs and abrasions. About half of the bus crash patients at Upstate were still hospitalized Monday.

It was one of Central New York’s biggest mass casualty incidents in recent years. A 2001 Amtrak train crash in Lyncourt injured 61 people, 50 of whom were treated at Syracuse hospitals. A massive outbreak of food poisoning in 1994 among Oneida Indians visiting Central New York sickened 80 people who were taken to hospitals in Syracuse, Auburn and Fulton.

Corona was helping his daughter move from Liverpool to Baldwinsville when he was notified of the incident. He changed plans and came to the hospital. As word got out about the accident, some employees volunteered to come in and help out, he said.

Marylin Galimi, a hospital vice president who is fluent in Spanish, served as an interpreter. She didn’t go home until about 2:45 a.m. Sunday and was back by 8:30 a.m. “She bonded with these people and didn’t want to leave them,” Corona said.

Hospital staff got baby formula to feed an infant whose mother was injured in the crash and couldn’t breast feed the child, Corona said. “That baby captured the hearts of everyone here,” he said. They also provided clothing and medications to other passengers.

Over the weekend Upstate also cared for seven victims of an early morning fire Sunday on the North Side, a man shot by Syracuse police after he allegedly attacked his roommate and some stabbing victims, according to Corona.

“It was a very strenuous weekend,” Corona said. “It required people to stay late beyond the end of their shifts. But they never flinched.”