Bus with no students aboard hits Eastern Parkway home, and 26 residents must relocate

A school bus carrying no students went over a curb on Eastern Parkway on Thursday morning, Sept. 17, and plowed into the front of a four-story apartment house in Crown Heights. Twenty-six people who live there were signed up for emergency relocation.

The crash happened at roughly 7:21 a.m. According to police, the 65-year-old driver was traveling west when the bus mounted the curb and struck 869 Eastern Parkway, which sits on the Albany Avenue corner. Security camera footage seems to capture the bus racing across the intersection and the parkway’s service road before it ended up lodged in the building.

Crown Heights bus crash: injuries and vacate order

According to the NYPD, the driver turned down medical attention at the scene, and police had no reports of anyone else being hurt. No students were on board, police said.

The building appeared to be heavily damaged. Inspectors from the Department of Buildings were at the site Thursday and issued a partial vacate order covering seven of its eight apartments. The American Red Cross enrolled 20 adults and six children, 26 people in all, for relocation help, the department said.

The agency also told the owner to put up construction fencing around the damaged section “in the interest of public safety.”

“It is an absolute miracle no one was seriously hurt or killed here,” said Clare Paterson, a Crown Heights resident.

Who ran the school bus

Investigators are still looking into what caused the crash. The bus belongs to Jofaz Transportation, a company that city records show holds a number of current agreements for busing public school children. Whether this particular bus was operating under a city contract was not immediately clear, as the Department of Education did not answer that question right away.