Steel pole slices through bus, leaving 5 dead.

A charter bus veered off a central California highway before dawn Tuesday and struck a pole that sliced the vehicle nearly in half, killing five people and sending five more to hospitals, some with lost limbs, authorities said.

Rescuers pulled out "bags of body parts" from the survivors of the crash on State Route 99, where the speeding bus hit the pole of a highway exit sign head-on, Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke said. It sheared straight through the bus, stopping at the first rear axle "with a great impact," he said.
Emergency workers climbed in through the windows to pull passengers out, while others were ejected and lying in a ditch, Warnke said. The five injured were airlifted to hospitals, California Highway Patrol Officer Moises Onsurez said. He did not have information about any additional injuries or the cause of the single-vehicle crash.