Families Gather at Atlanta Team Crash Site as NTSB Investigates

About 20 family members of the baseball players involved in Friday's fatal bus wreck on I-75 visited the scene Saturday as traffic accident investigators worked nearby.

The group, ranging in age from what looked to be older parents to children as young as elementary school-age, gathered about noon on the Northside Drive bridge from which the bus plunged onto the interstate.

Surrounded by police and Red Cross workers, some members of the group carried boxes of tissues, while others had cameras.

They looked at the exit ramp the bus ran up as it came off the freeway and at the highway below the overpass where the bus ended up on its side.

Several also began reading the cards and memorial cards left by well-wishers in the chain-link fence atop the low concrete wall of the Northside bridge.

Other family members boarded buses from their downtown hotel to visit the four ballplayers still at Grady Memorial Hospital.

Bluffton University officials flew in Friday night and met Saturday morning at the Marriott Marquis in downtown Atlanta with the victims to answer questions.

Parents were anxious to nail down logistics, said Lynn Mesley, whose son, 19-year-old James Hausman, was on the bus.

Some team members gathered in the hotel lobby Saturday morning, their scrapes, bruises, limps and bandages labeling them as survivors of the bus' plunge off Northside Drive onto I-75 early Friday morning.

Atlanta police spokesman Officer Steve Coleman said Saturday that the wrecked bus was taken overnight to a secure location at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

That will be one of the places investigators go Saturday, according to Paul Schlamm, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the investigation.

The NTSB's Schlamm said the teams of investigators are focusing on a number of areas.

"We have teams at the roadway, at the bus; others who will be gathering up reports on the bus, on the drivers; others who will be doing interviews [with passengers or witnesses] - anyone who can say what happened," said Schlamm.

The bus was carrying the Bluffton Beavers baseball team from Ohio to Florida, where they were scheduled to play in a tournament next week. It was southbound on I-75 when it went up an off-ramp from the high-occupancy vehicle lanes, crossed Northside Drive and plunged sideways over the bridge rail and landed on the interstate.

The 29 surviving passengers were taken to Grady Memorial Hospital, Piedmont Hospital and Atlanta Medical Center. Two were in critical condition, one was serious and 16 others were in good to fair condition, hospital officials said Friday. The most critically injured tended to be near the front of the bus. Injuries included bruised lungs, a spleen that had to be removed and a blood clot on one student's brain that led to emergency neurosurgery.

After learning of the 5:30 a.m. crash, family members from Ohio came to Atlanta to be with their children. Most stayed at the Marriott Marquis hotel.

By Saturday, the passengers not hospitalized were nursing cuts and bruises. And looking for clothing.

"Many of these kids - their clothes are soaked in diesel," Atlanta Fire Department spokesman Capt. Byron Kennedy said Saturday. The Red Cross is collecting donations. "Most of their families, they're ready to get back home."

Schlamm, the NTSB spokesman, said he does not expect investigators to report quickly on what caused the accident.

An electronic device on the bus will be used to determine more about the accident, Schlamm said. At a Friday night news conference, officials said they would look at all factors, including the configuration of the exit ramp and signage leading up to it.

There were no skid marks, indicating the driver either did not attempt to stop or there was a mechanical failure, police said.

Much of what investigators hope to learn will come from the baseball players.