'Amazing person': Bus driver, 60, dead in horror highway bus crash
A bus driver is dead and at least nine passengers have been injured after their coach crashed into trailers that had come loose from a B-double truck in the state's west.
The Adelaide to Melbourne overnight bus is believed to have been carrying more than 40 passengers, many of them tourists, when it hit the trailers on the Western Highway near Pimpinio about 2am on Thursday.
The driver, a 60-year-old man from Ferntree Gully in Melbourne's east, died at the scene.
Two passengers were flown to Melbourne with serious injuries, while a third was later driven to the city for further treatment.
An emergency management station was set up at Wimmera Health Care in nearby Horsham, where 43 passengers have been assessed.
Wimmera Health chief executive Catherine Morley said while almost all affected patients at the local hospital would be discharged today, they "have had a traumatic experience".
"There’s a real variety of people here, families, young kids, older people, some people with bruises and sore bones ... we have tourists from Germany, a lady from Vietnam," Ms Morley said.
"The majority injured are tourists, transiting from one place to another, who haven’t got family support here or anything."
She said passengers had spoken of their admiration for the deceased bus driver.
"Apparently the bus driver was an amazing person who took the brunt of the accident to save the people on the bus.
"There’s a lovely man here who supported the driver, he was still alive [after the crash]."
The coach had left Adelaide about 8.15pm on Wednesday and was due in Melbourne early Thursday morning.
Police believe the trailers of the B-double, which was travelling in front of the coach, had come loose and blocked the road, leaving their dark underside, without lights or reflectors, difficult to see.
"The injuries aren’t as bad because it wasn’t two big machines running at 100km/h," Ms Morley said.
It is not known how the trailers became dislodged or whether the truck had crashed first.
Paramedics treated a man in his 40s for serious leg injuries. He was flown Royal Melbourne Hospital in a stable condition.
A woman in her 60s was treated for arm injuries and flown to The Alfred hospital, also in a stable condition.
Another seven people, aged between their teens to their 70s, were treated by paramedics at the scene and taken to Horsham by ambulance.
Ms Morley praised local emergency service workers, with 20 extra people called in to Wimmera Health Care early this morning.
"The original nurse in charge handled this exceptionally well. The people who were on the bus are very calm considering it was such a serious accident, and very scary happening in the middle of the night. They’ve accepted the story and they’re just going with the flow."
Detectives from the Major Collision Unit trvaelled to the scene on Thursday morning.
The Western Highway remains closed in both directions.