Several people have been injured after a German tourist bus overturned in Trøndelag in central Norway on Saturday, Norwegian public broadcaster NRK reported.
Thirty-four German tourists were on board, eleven of whom were taken to hospital with minor injuries, according to NRK and emergency manager Odd Håkon Bakk, who spoke to regional newspaper Adresse on Saturday afternoon.
The bus had been travelling south on the E6 in Namsskogan, when it came off the road, NRK said.
“The bus is lying on its side in a gentle curve where it appears to have overturned in the bend, where the road may be a bit uneven,” said NRK’s freelancer on the scene, Anne Elisabeth Brekkvassmo.
According to a trailer driver who was behind the bus for about an hour, it had been driving calmly on the road, Dagbladet newspaper reported.
The passengers were helped by emergency services and volunteers at the scene, who broke into the coach with a hammer.
An air ambulance and rescue helicopters were also sent to the site of the accident.
“It was a bit chaotic,” Elin Torgnes, one of the first to arrive at the scene, told NRK’s Brekkvassmo.
“I only helped with patients and those who were most injured. There were four of them,” she said.
Namsskogan municipality set up a crisis team and arranged for a bus to take the passengers to the municipal care centre.
“We are prepared to receive those who are less injured and shaken after the accident, says Mayor Elisabeth Vollmo Bjørhusdal,” said Mayor of Namsskogan, Elisabeth Vollmo Bjørhusdal.
The E6 was completed closed and then restricted for several hours after the accident, but after recovery and clearance operations concluded on Saturday evening, normal traffic flow was restored.
It is not yet known why the bus overturned.
“These are our best drivers and the bus is nice and new. We don’t know why this happened,” the head of the bus company Jörn Frenzel, told Adresse, adding that the company was very happy that no-one had been seriously injured.
In 2014, there was a serious accident involving tourists in the municipality when a Swiss bus overturned on the E6 in the municipality, killing four people.