Ten killed - including nine girls - on storm-soaked Alabama highway
(Reuters) -Ten people, including nine girls and a young father, were killed when a bus and other vehicles slammed together on a rain-drenched Alabama highway during Tropical Storm Claudette, authorities said on Sunday.
A nine-month-old girl and her 29-year-old father died in the Saturday afternoon pileup of about 18 vehicles, including an Alabama Sheriffs Youth Ranches bus carrying eight other girls aged 17 years and younger who also were killed, Butler County Sheriff Danny Bond said.
The ranch is home to "Alabama's needy, neglected, or abused, school-aged children," according to its website. A ranch spokesperson did not immediately return a Reuters request for comment.
The cause of the crash on Interstate Highway 65 between Greenville and Fort Deposit, which was awash from the powerful storm, was under investigation. The accident occurred at about 2:45 p.m. local time on a downhill stretch leading to a bridge over a creek, Bond said.
"This is the worst accident in our county history," he told Reuters.
The father killed with his baby daughter was driving a car in which the mother and others did not suffer major injuries, Bond said.
About five other people were hurt in the crash, but none of the injuries were critical, Bond said.
Alabama Law Enforcement Agency officials are investigating whether the accident could have been caused by vehicles hydroplaning on a wet roadway, Bond said.
Efforts by Reuters to reach the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency were not immediately successful.
The weakening storm was classified on Sunday as Tropical Depression Claudette, according to the National Weather Service. It headed away from Alabama after shattering rainfall records in several cities and being blamed for an additional two deaths after a tree fell on a rain-drenched home outside Tuscaloosa on Saturday, local media reported.
(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New YorkEditing by Matthew Lewis)
