East Bay teacher, students injured in tour bus crash in France
ALBANY -- An East Bay teacher and more than a dozen students were injured in a tour bus crash in France on Friday.
Photos of the wreckage show damage to the front of the bus after it collided with a big rig. Brandon Mercer's teen daughters Addison and Sydney were on that bus.
Mercer said it was a chain reaction crash a highway in southern France.
"We got a call it was early in the morning on Friday. And it's one of those terrifying calls where your child is screaming and hysterical and you don't know what's going on and you try to get them to calm down," said Mercer.
Both of his daughters are shaken and bruised. They were among 13 students who suffered injuries, some of them serious. In total, there were 37 people on board, most of them students who are about to start Albany High School in the fall.
The trip had been postponed from 2020 due to the pandemic, so there were soon-to-be juniors on the trip as well.
"My daughter says, 'My head was thrown into the seat in front of me, and then I slipped in the aisle, I stood up and clutched my arm rest and screamed and someone told me to be quiet, so I stopped. But I was having an anxiety attack,'" said Mercer, who was narrating a text from one of his daughters.
EF Educational Tours, which operated the tour, said the Albany Middle School French teacher is doing well, but has a fair amount of recovery ahead.
"The biggest thing I can say is you don't think about wearing your seatbelt on a bus. You say, "It's a bus or a limo or a shuttle I'm not going to wear my seatbelt,'" Mercer said. "The kids that wore their seatbelts had really no problems, and the ones that didn't have their seatbelt on were the ones that have injuries."
Mercer's daughters were taken to the hospital for observation, but are now able to resume their tour of France.
Sydney said in a statement to KPIX 5:
"It was a very scary situation but the chaperones and French paramedics worked tirelessly to help us. I helped alongside the other older students translating between the kids and the medical professionals the best we could. Luckily most injuries were not too severe. We are hoping that our teacher will be okay and that the students who were hurt more severely will have speedy recoveries and recieve proper treatment. I am very proud of how everyone acted as they all comforted and helped one another."
The sisters also helped others with first aid kits.
"Certainly a terrifying experience when there was no information and then it turned into an experience where we were just so proud of how everybody worked together and how the chaperones and the teachers and everybody worked together," said Mercer.
The Albany Unified School District is not officially associated with the tour.