MORE DETAILS AND PHOTOS OF THE BARONESS U.K. BUS ACCIDENT
As many Baroness fans on this site and elsewhere have pointed out, the lack of details surrounding the Baroness bus accident in the U.K. is troubling, particularly concerning the condition of the two “seriously injured” passengers. A number of news reports have appeared throughout the day with different bits of information, so this is our attempt at cobbling together as complete a picture as possible given what we know.
It appears certain that it was raining heavily at the time of the accident (around 11:30am local time), and that the crummy weather played at least some part in what happened.
Tony Cook, 61, witnessed the event while he was working on a property at the bottom of Brassknocker Hill, where the bus went off the viaduct. From The Mirror:
At the top of the hill it is quite windy so they were going quite slow and seemed to be taking it quite carefully. It was torrential rain – it was like one of these eastern storms or something, it was like a river down here. Whether the brakes went at the bottom or, what the driver said to one of my blokes, was that the steering went, he couldn’t get around the coroner, so whether the hydraulics or something went, I don’t know. When we got down there the driver was hanging out of front of the coach, but his legs were trapped so we had to free him and get him back and comfortable. Then we got some ladders down there so that the people that were conscious inside could get out. We just got the people to the side of the road and made them comfortable and just helped where we could because obviously there was quite a bit of commotion, screaming and that, but then the police and the ambulance got here and they took over. It was a left-hand drive, German coach, and inside there were all fairy lights, but it was all quite a mess by the time we got there. First of all you think maybe his brakes went, but I don’t think he would have got quite as far around, but he said he couldn’t steer around the corner, so it could have been that he was going too fast, but it could be a combination of things.
The Mirror and Yahoo both concur that seven of the bus’s nine passengers were able to get out of the wrecked bus by themselves. The remaining two, one of whom was the driver and the other of whom the identity is not known, had to be cut free with hydraulic tools by the fire department. Those two suffered the “most serious injuries,” according to The Mirror — including “multiple fractures” — and were taken to Frenchay Hospital in Bristol while the remaining seven suffered “more minor injuries” and were taken to the Royal United Hospital in Bath.
The good news is that both sources claim that none of the injuries are life-threatening. The bad news is that “not life-threatening” still leaves a whole lot of room for horrible shit.
A comment left on MetalSucks early today by a user known as “Metalmusictalk” says that according to drummer Allen Blickle’s brother, a friend of the commenter, Blickle has “a cracked vertebrae and possibly a punctured lung.” The commenter also claims that in addition to the bus driver, bassist Matt Maggioni had “bad injuries” as well, although he did not specify what kind of injuries those might be. MetalSucks has not been able to confirm any of this with an official source, so it should be treated purely as speculation.
Photos from The Mirror:
