NTSB Probing Deadly Seattle Duck Boat Crash

North Seattle College said on Friday four college students killed in a head-on collision of their charter bus and an amphibious tour bus were from Austria, Indonesia, Japan and China.

The other victims from Thursday’s crash were identified as 18-year-old Privaudo Putradauto of Indonesia, Mami Sato, 37, from Japan and a 17-year-old Chinese student whose name was not released because she is a minor.

“I got out of my auto and there were bodies just everywhere”, Volm, a 23-year-old from Philadelphia, said.

Seattle police conducted a preliminary evaluation of the drivers Thursday and said they not find any evidence of impairment.

The state looked at installing a center barrier on the bridge several times during the 1990s, but leaders didn’t act on it due to a lack of money, according to lawyers who worked on the legal cases that followed a deadly crash on the Aurora Bridge in November 1998. The company is providing access to vehicle video during the crash to help with the investigation.

Traveling in the opposite direction, two Philadelphia friends on a road trip across the country, Brad Volm and Bradley Sawhill, were cruising over picturesque Lake Union when they said they saw the duck boat’s left tire “lock up” as it swerved into the charter bus, t-boning it. Their SUV hit another truck head-on, but they escaped injuries.

After the accident, the UTC released its most recent inspection report of Ride the Ducks from December 2012, in which an inspector described the firm as “safety-oriented”.

“Overnight WSDOT had a chance to inspect the bridge, they now tell us, ‘No damage, ‘” said KING 5’s Jake Whittenberg. The president of Ride the Ducks Seattle said his main concern was the families of the victims.

The haunting carnage wrought by a collision involving a “Ride the Ducks” tour in Seattle came seconds after the amphibious vehicle displayed troubling signs, survivors said.

Investigators are also asking witnesses who have photographs, video or other relevant information to call a Seattle police hotline at 206-233-5000, Weener said.

Investigators with the Washington State Department of Transportation reportedly have said the Aurora Bridge is safe to cross after the accident.

“This is a major investigation as far as we’re concerned”, National Transportation Safety Board member Earl Weener told reporters. Tracey said 36 people were on the vehicle, whose driver had Coast Guard certification and a commercial driving license.

“We’re a very connected community, like a family, so it’s nice that we’re coming together this morning”.

The infrequency of such inspections comes down to a manpower issue, she said.

North Seattle College student Rujia Xie, left, and Mingyue Lu, right, both worldwide students from China who were on the charter bus that crashed, talk with the media at North Seattle College on Thursday, September 24, 2015. “We thought about it a lot on our way to downtown”.

“Please write a supportive message to the people who lost a family member or friend in the tragic bus accident”, a sign on the table says.