Eleven people have been hospitalised after a bus and a car crashed in Sydney’s north-west, in what emergency responders described as a “complex incident”.
NSW Police, NSW ambulance and Fire and Rescue NSW responded to reports that a bus had collided with the back of a SUV on the M2 Motorway on Khartoum Road at Macquarie Park about 3:30pm on Sunday.
A family of five were in the car, and the bus was full of passengers.
The busy M2 was closed for the rescue operation, with vision from the scene showing multiple emergency personnel assisting people off the bus while treating others on stretchers.
Five people were in the car and the bus was full of passengers at the time of the crash. (ABC News)
Inspector Josh Turner from Fire and Rescue NSW said they encountered a “mass patient situation” on arrival, with two people, including the 40-year-old bus driver, in a “serious trap situation” which took some time to get them out.
“Once the first patient was removed, we then attended the bus driver,” Inspector Turner said.
“It was quite a tricky rescue … because bus drivers are in some enclosed cabin area and have a lot of technology around them, so it was quite complex to remove them.Â
“In the end we did a seat removal and removed him from the back of the driver’s cabin rather than from the side which we first tried to do.”People taken to Royal North Shore and Westmead hospitals
NSW Ambulance had 18 resources at the scene and paramedics assessed 38 people.
“We had four patients in a stable but serious condition transported to hospital,” Inspector Christian Holmes from NSW Ambulance said.
“And seven patients in a stable condition with minor injuries transported to hospital.”
He added that the bus driver and one of the people in the car were among those in a serious but stable condition, while the other four car occupants were part of the seven people with minor injuries.
Christian Holmes says paramedics assessed 38 people at the scene. (ABC News)
Patients were taken to Royal North Shore Hospital and Westmead Hospital, with injuries involving fractures, bruises, lacerations but no one had sustained life threatening injuries.
About 27 bus passengers walked away unharmed.
“Multiple agencies were required at this and it was a very good outcome in the end that took a lot of co ordination between all agencies at the time,” Inspector Turner said.
NSW Police officers are investigating the cause of the crash.