23 DIE IN CHARTER BUS CRASH; MOTHER'S DAY CASINO EXCURSION PROVES DEADLY.

Byline: Anthony Ramirez The New York Times

Chartered to take at least 46 people from a New Orleans suburb to a Mississippi casino, a bus veered across a busy interstate highway and into an embankment Sunday, killing 23 and injuring 20, including many older women on a Mother's Day trip.

The front of the bus was mangled, with tires twisted and pushed into the passenger compartment. The bus company operator and a hospital official quoted the driver, who was critically hurt, as saying that he swerved the bus when another vehicle cut in front of it.

The police said it was not immediately known how fast the bus was traveling.

The crash was among the deadlier for a bus in the nation's history, according to the National Transportation and Safety Board. The worst bus crash was in 1976 when 53 were killed aboard a school bus Yuba City, Calif.

The chartered bus started out in LaPlace, La., about 25 miles west of New Orleans, and was headed east on Interstate 610 for a 90-mile trip to the Casino Magic resort in Bay St. Louis, Miss. The bus crashed about 10 a.m.

Authorities said the bus veered across three lanes of traffic, narrowly missing several vehicles. It hit the edge of a guardrail, careened into a tree-lined grassy area and skidded beside the highway for about 50 yards, then crashed through a chain-link fence, plunged into a gully and hit an embankment, a police spokesman said.

Nineteen people were pronounced dead at the scene and four died at hospitals, officials said. Authorities could not remove the bodies in the front of the bus for four hours because it was so crumpled that the wheels were two feet off the ground. Rescue squads had to brace the bus with timbers and use ladders to reach the windows.

``We have people on top of each other, crushed between twisted metal,'' Officer Joe Narcisse of the New Orleans Police Department said.

Seventeen people were hospitalized, and three were released after emergency room treatment.

The bus was operated by Custom Bus Charters, based in Gretna, La. A company spokesman, Terrell Walker, identified the driver as Frank Bedell, 49.

On CNN, Walker and Jerry Romig, a spokesman for Charity Hospital, said the driver told investigators that he swerved to the right when another vehicle cut him off.

Walker said Bedell has worked for the company for three years with no record of problems. Walker also told the network that the bus had new brakes and no record of recent mechanical problems.

New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial said the city's Police Department would work with the National Transportation and Safety Board to investigate the crash. He said the driver's blood would be tested for drugs and alcohol, as is customary after a fatal crash.

Walker said 46 people were on the bus, but the list of passengers was lost in the wreckage.

Romig said the hospital opened four trauma operating rooms and was calling in every available doctor and nurse. He said the crash was the worst he had seen and that the outlook was poor for many of those hospitalized.

``We've had some very badly injured people, and the fact that they're elderly doesn't help at all,'' he said. ``Some are in their 70s, some in their 80s, and that makes it doubly tough. It makes it more difficult for them to sustain trauma, especially chest injuries.''

Four charter buses bound for casinos in Atlantic City crashed in New Jersey in late December and early January. The most serious Atlantic City crash occurred on Christmas Eve, killing eight people.

Casinos often provide inexpensive package tours, meals or other incentives to attract customers for weekend trips. Many of the elderly customers come on buses and visit only for one day.

In Louisiana, it is a common practice for casinos to pay bus companies to organize excursions for the elderly, although it was not immediately known whether Custom Bus had such an arrangement.

The Associated Press quoted George Tassin, a relative of eight of the passengers on the bus that crashed, as saying most in the group were members of an informal club that went to the casino twice a month. Tassin's wife, daughter and an aunt were among the injured, he said.

He said his aunt was making her first trip away from home since the recent death of her husband. ``My aunt finally decided to go this one time, and this happened,'' he said.

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PHOTO (color) A worker climbs into a bus that crashed Sunday in New Orleans.

Bill Haber/Associated Press