Remembering The 29 Lost On This Day – 50 Years Ago

Fifty years ago today, a school bus carrying a high school choir from Yuba City High School to Orinda for a performance at Miramonte High veered off the Interstate 680 Marina Vista exit and rolled off the ramp – landing on its roof 22 feet below. The impact killed 28 students and a school chaperone.

The Yuba City Bus Crash, as it became known to those affected by its lethality, remains one of the deadliest mass casualty crashes in U.S. history. For Contra Costa County, only the wartime Port Chicago munitions explosion claimed more lives – 320 civilians and service members in 1944.

Memorials marking the loss of so many lives were erected both in Martinez at the Marina Yacht Club and in Yuba City, where friends, survivors and first responders gathered Thursday to mark the day.