Thirteen people were injured when an employee shuttle bus jumped a curb and slammed into a concrete wall at Newark Liberty International Airport early Monday.

Three people suffered serious injuries. The good news: none of the injuries were believed to be life-threatening.

The crash happened outside Terminal B, on its Level 3 departures roadway, just after 3 a.m. Eastern on August 31.

Footage shared by Fox News shows the damage left behind:

ABC7 New York detailed the injuries following the collision: three people were seriously hurt, while the other ten suffered minor injuries. The station said the shuttle jumped a curb before hitting the concrete wall.

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This was an employee shuttle operating at the airport, not an aircraft accident. The collision occurred on the roadway serving departing passengers at Terminal B, where police activity temporarily changed the drop-off arrangements.

During the emergency response, the Port Authority Police Department directed departing Terminal B passengers to Level 2 instead. That instruction concerned access to the terminal; it was not an announcement that the airport had shut down.

Serious injuries can still require significant medical treatment even when they are not considered life-threatening. The cause of the collision has not been announced.

The airport issued this advisory during the early-morning response, before the roadway reopened:

News 12 New Jersey later reported that the damaged bus was towed away shortly before 8 a.m. Eastern. The third-level roadway reopened to traffic around 8:30 a.m., after remaining closed through the early-morning response.

The station also confirmed that air traffic was not affected. The disruption was on the ground outside Terminal B, where emergency crews and Port Authority police responded to the crash and the injured were taken to area hospitals.

That reopening matters for travelers seeing the airport’s earlier drop-off alert: the initial closure was temporary. It should not be confused with an ongoing airport-wide shutdown or a halt to flight operations.

What remains unanswered is why the bus struck the wall. News 12’s reporting did not establish a cause, and the investigation is continuing.

News 12 reporter Tony Caputo captured the bus being removed from Terminal B that morning:

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For now, the priority is the people recovering from this crash and getting a clear account of what happened. A reopened roadway does not answer the question of how an employee shuttle ended up against a concrete wall.

Terminal B file photo, May 2013: Famartin / CC BY-SA 3.0. Cropped and color-adjusted; adapted image available under the same license.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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