November 21, 1999
Web posted at: 6:25 p.m. EST (2325 GMT)

From staff and wire reports

WHITE HAVEN, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- Two people died and more than 100 were injured after four charter buses loaded with Penn State University students crashed on a foggy interstate in eastern Pennsylvania early Sunday, authorities said.

University President Graham B. Spanier said the buses hit a "very thick wall of fog." The ensuing chain-reaction wreck involved three of the buses smashing into one another with a fourth hitting a guard rail. A pickup truck and two cars also became tangled in the wreckage, officials said.

The bus driver who died, Robert Clifford Burge, 50, of Altoona, Pennsylvania, was in the second of the four buses. The student, whose name was not released, was in the first row of seats on the third bus, Spanier said.

At least five people, including another bus driver who underwent surgery, remained hospitalized in serious condition Sunday, he said. Police didn't know the conditions Sunday of the drivers and passengers in the cars. Spanier said most of the other injuries were minor.

The accident took place just after midnight on a stretch of highway near the Poconos Mountains, about 12 miles southeast of Wilkes-Barre. A total of six buses, chartered from the Alatoona-based Blue & White Lines, were carrying about 280 students, school officials said.

Students who weren't injured in the crash were taken to three Palmerton churches until more buses arrived to return them to State College. The trip had been organized by Penn State's Association of Residence Hall Students. By Sunday afternoon, 220 students had returned to campus, Spanier said.

Kathy Bell, a cashier at the Bandit Truck Stop, said truck drivers were pulling off the road all night to avoid driving in the fog.

"It was almost like a whiteout," Bell said. "You would hit, like, a white spot where you couldn't see anything."

CNN affiliate station WBRE and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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