Anchorage

No critical injuries in Anchorage school bus collision

Shards of glass and plastic lay scattered around the intersection of Northern Lights Boulevard and UAA Drive in Anchorage Wednesday morning after a black Ford Mustang slid beneath the rear of an Anchorage School District bus carrying local high school students to the King Career Center for afternoon classes. There were no life-threatening injuries in the accident.

The crash, reported around 11 a.m., shut down the westbound lanes of Northern Lights between Bragaw Street and Lake Otis Parkway for roughly an hour before Anchorage emergency response personnel cleared the scene. The students were shuttled away from the crash after another yellow bus arrived to pick them up.

Anchorage Police Department spokeswoman Jennifer Castro, who arrived on scene after the chaos had cleared, said no students were injured and although the driver of the sports car -- the sole occupant of the vehicle -- was taken to the hospital, the unidentified individual did not have any life-threatening injuries.

Castro did not know the sex of the Mustang's driver. She added that alcohol doesn't seem to be a factor but speed may have been.

"It's one of those accidents that just looks really bad, but it wasn't actually as bad as it looked," said Castro, standing at the intersection where the accident occurred.

Emergency personnel lingered on scene until around 11:45, when an Alaska Towing and Wrecking truck came to pull what was left of the Mustang -- with a crunched black-and-white-striped hood and shattered windshield -- out from beneath the school bus.

Prying the two vehicles apart required some finesse, with the tow-truck driver having to lift the rear of the school bus using the bed of his truck because the Mustang was wedged so tightly underneath. As he worked, the closed lanes slowly began to reopen.

Shortly after noon, the Mustang was loaded onto the flat bed of the tow truck, the school bus was driven from the scene and traffic was once again flowing as normal.

Megan Edge

Megan Edge is a former reporter for Alaska Dispatch and Alaska Dispatch News.

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