Teens Recall Unease Before Bus Accident

29 People Injured in Canadian Crash

As a snowstorm raged over the wrecked bus, Matt Almquist didn't realize his own face was bleeding. He was too busy helping a friend who had crashed through a window and badly injured his hand, crushing one finger and slicing through another.

"To pull my friend out of the bus with a half-severed hand was, like, the most traumatizing experience of my life," he said, speaking yesterday from a Montreal airport.

Almquist, 17, a senior at Arlington County's Washington-Lee High School, was among three busloads of students from several Northern Virginia high schools who were returning Monday from a ski weekend in Quebec when one of the buses hit a median, fishtailed and tipped over, according to witnesses.

Twenty-nine people were treated at St. Croix Hospital in Drummondville, north of Montreal, for fractures, bruises and lacerations, said Annick Giguere, a technical services manager there. Almquist received stitches near an eye and was treated for a dislocated shoulder.

Giguere said yesterday that the driver was in the hospital and one student was waiting for her parents to pick her up. Many students left midday on another bus expected back early this morning; others flew home.

The trip, an annual event, was not affiliated with any school. It was sponsored by Atlantic Sun Tours of Merrifield. The Friday-to-Monday trip to Mont Sainte Anne cost $399, plus equipment rentals and lessons, with discounts offered to certain students who got friends to sign up, according to the company Web site.

Most parents apparently were in swift contact with their children after the crash, although several said they did not hear from company representatives.

"They didn't call at all," said Betty McGonagle. She said her daughter Maureen, 17, a senior at Washington-Lee, called to tell her of the crash.

A tour guide's cellphone message referred callers yesterday to another number; a man answering there said the company was not commenting and hung up. The company released a statement that said its personnel were busy helping students involved in the crash.

Students from Washington-Lee, Yorktown High School and H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program were on the trip, said Arlington schools spokeswoman Linda Erdos. She said she could not reach company representatives to determine how many students came from each school.

Another bus, which did not crash, also carried students from Bishop Ireton Catholic School in Alexandria and possibly from T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, officials at those schools said.

Witnesses said the accident happened about 2:25 p.m. as the bus tried to pass another bus and slid into a median. Several students said that before the accident they worried that the bus was moving too fast for the icy conditions.

"I was really, really nervous," said Rob Jennings, 18, a senior at Washington-Lee. "I noticed we were going really fast." He guessed the bus was going about 65 mph. "We had already pulled over at least three times to get ice off the windshield," he said.

After the accident, "the bus filled with snow in less than a second, and it was freezing," Jennings said. Students exited through a window, he said, adding, "There was, like, blood all over the snow and on the side of the bus."

Giguere said that all the students had met with social workers and psychiatrists and that all had spoken to their parents by phone on the day of the accident.

McGonagle said she and her husband had never felt entirely comfortable about the trip because it was not school-sponsored and the destination was so far away. But they let their daughter go for the second time, they said, because she was a straight-A student who had earned the money to pay for it.