PENDLETON, Ore. -- RCMP in British Columbia were asked Sunday to help notify the relatives of people on a Vancouver-bound tour bus that crashed in Oregon Sunday morning, killing nine people.
Police were asked to notify relatives in the Vancouver-area, said RCMP Sgt. Peter Thiessen.
"Oregon state police has requested our assistance in regards to that tragic crash in their jurisdiction and requested that we assist in some of the next of kin notifications that may need to be done here in the Lower Mainland or even outside the Lower Mainland," said Thiessen in an interview.
"So as we do them, those notifications, we will be supporting those families that are affected and will be providing information back to the Oregon State Police in regards to those next of kin notifications."
Thiessen declined to answer questions about the nationalities of the victims.
Police say the bus was on its way to Vancouver from Las Vegas and was owned by a Vancouver company called Mi Joo travel.
Police say there were a total of 40 people on board.
The bus careened through a guardrail along an icy Oregon highway and several hundred feet down a steep embankment Sunday, killing nine people and injuring more than 20 others, authorities said.
The charter bus carrying about 40 people lost control around 10:30 a.m. on snow- and ice-covered lanes of Interstate 84 in a rural area of eastern Oregon, according to the Oregon State Police. The bus crashed near the start of a 7-mile section of road that winds down a hill.
The bus came to rest at the bottom of a snowy slope and landed upright, with little or no debris visible around the crash site.
More than a dozen rescue workers descended the hill and used ropes to help retrieve people from the wreckage in freezing weather. The bus driver was among the survivors, but had not yet spoken to police because of the severity of the injuries the driver had suffered.
Lt. Greg Hastings said the bus crashed along the west end of the Blue Mountains, and west of an area called Deadman Pass. The area is so dangerous the state transportation department published specific warnings for truck drivers, advising it had "some of the most changeable and severe weather conditions in the Northwest" and can lead to slick conditions and poor visibility.
St. Anthony Hospital in Pendleton treated 26 people from the accident, said hospital spokesman Larry Blanc. Five of those treated at St. Anthony were transported to other facilities.
I-84 is a major east-west highway through Oregon that follows the Columbia River Gorge.
A woman who answered the phone at a listing for Mi Joo confirmed with The Associated Press that it owned the bus and said it was on a tour of the Western U.S. She declined to give her name.
A bus safety website run by the U.S. Department of Transportation said Mi Joo Tour & Travel has six buses, none of which have been involved in any accidents in at least the past two years.
The bus crash was the second fatal accident in Oregon on Sunday morning. A 69-year-old man died in a rollover accident.
A spokesman for the American Bus Association said buses carry more than 700 million passengers a year in the United States.
"The industry as a whole is a very safe industry," said Dan Ronan of the Washington, D.C.,-based group. "There are only a handful of accidents every year. Comparatively speaking, we're the safest form of surface transportation."
