See Photos of the Scene and News Conference
Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) officials including New York City Transit (NYCT) President Richard Davey, New York City Transit Chief Operating Officer Craig Cipriano, MTA Chief Safety and Security Officer Pat Warren and New York City Transit Senior Vice President for Buses Frank Annicaro visited the scene of an incident on Thursday morning involving a Bx21 bus that impacted an elevated subway structure at Boston Rd and Longfellow Av in the Bronx.
Also on scene: members of the NYPD who are leading the crash investigation; FDNY responders, EMS who treated victims at the scene, and TWU Local 100 who represent the injured bus operator.
A transcript of remarks from NYC Transit President Richard Davey is below.
Richard Davey: Thanks for joining us. My name is Richard Davey, I'm the President of New York City Transit. Behind me, I'm joined by members of the New York City Fire Department, NYPD, members of my team at New York City Transit and members of the TWU 100 who represent, among other folks, the bus operators here in our system. I'm going to stop when the trains go by.
First thing I want to say is that our hearts and prayers go out to the bus operator and the 12 customers who were on the bus that you see behind us, hit the structure here. The bus operator is in critical condition. The 12 customers who were removed, we’ll let Fire discuss their situation. But it's fair to say that this is a tough day for the transit family, which is why I think you see so many of us represented here today. We’ll obviously do and have begun already an investigation as to what occurred and why this happened. But right now, I think our attention is focused not only investigation, but the health and wellbeing of the 13 folks that were on this bus.
(Responding to a reporter’s question about the health of the bus operator before the incident)
All of our bus operators go through a biannual medical physical. The operator had hers six months ago and was fit for duty, and all of our operators are met and checked on a daily basis for fit for duty as well. So they will see a yard supervisor or crew dispatcher, as an example, as she did this morning.