Bus crash in French wine country kills dozens
PARIS -- At least 43 people, mostly elderly tourists starting off on a day trip, were killed Friday when a bus and truck collided on a country road in wine country in southwest France, officials said.
The bus driver survived the crash, and CBS Radio News correspondent Elaine Cobbe says he told one of the first doctors on the scene that the truck had been driving down the middle of the road and he couldn't avoid it.
Local police said the collision was so violent that both vehicles immediately burst into flames.
Cobbe reports the elderly bus passengers came from all around the rural area of Petit Palais in southwestern France, a region with only about 700 inhabitants.
Officials attributed the unusually high death toll to the fact that the bus caught on fire almost immediately.
The mayor of the small town of Puisseguin, near where the crash happened, confirmed the collision occurred on a dangerous stretch of road where there have been numerous collisions in the past.
The driver helped eight people to escape the blazing bus, but the rest perished in the fire, along with the driver of the truck. Among those killed was the truck driver's 3-year-old son who was traveling with his father and whose small body was discovered in the truck's wreckage.
French President Francois Hollande, on a visit to Greece, said the government was "totally mobilized" to help after what he called a "terrible accident."
The bus was carrying the elderly people on a one-day tourist trip to another site in southwest France, and had just left when it collided with the truck, legislator Gilles Savary said on BFM television. He called it one of the deadliest accidents in recent years.
French media reports said some people managed to escape, notably by breaking windows.
The weather in the region was overcast Friday morning but not rainy.