London bus roof ripped off after hitting tree in Holborn

Five people escaped with minor injuries after the roof of a double-decker bus was torn off after hitting a tree in central London.

The bus, a No 91 heading to Trafalgar Square, was badly damaged after the incident in Holborn on Monday.

Pictures taken by witnesses showed the roof severed from the vehicle. One bystander said it could have “decapitated” its passengers.

Shattered glass was strewn across Kingsway, near the London School of Economics, with the bus roof trailing from the back of the vehicle.

Emergency services, including fire engines, paramedics and police officers, were on the scene soon after the incident occurred at about 1pm.

Five people were treated for relatively minor injuries. A London Ambulance spokeswoman said: “We were called at 1.03pm to reports of a road traffic collision involving a bus and a tree in Kingsway.

“We sent an ambulance crew, an advanced paramedic practitioner and a cycle responder and a duty station officer to the scene.

“We treated five patients. We treated two people for facial injuries. They were taken to St Thomas’s hospital. We treated two others for minor injuries; they were not taken to hospital. We treated another patient, a motorist, for a knee injury. This patient was discharged at the scene.”

The roof was later removed to a side street.

Metroline, the operator of the 91 bus service, said it was still working to understand the causes of the crash. A spokesman said: “An immediate investigation into the incident has commenced.”

The collision appeared to take place next to a traffic sign warning motorists about the danger posed by overhanding trees to tall vehicles.

Pictures showed that seats and poles on the top deck were left in place, despite the roof being almost completely ripped off.

Roma Small, a travel blogger who saw the damaged bus from an overlooking building, said she first heard about the collision when a worried friend sent a text message to her to ask if she was all right.

“Then I went to check it out. I pretty much thought there would have been people massively injured if not killed. It looked like it could have decapitated you,” she told the Guardian.

“I can see the whole bus and there’s no evidence of massive blood loss or anything.”

Billy, 21, a construction worker in the building opposite, described a sound of “loud crashing and crunching” as the bus collided with the tree.

“I heard a bang. It was horrible and the tree had ripped through,” he said. “Everyone was crouching or standing. A gentleman’s face was bleeding and a lady and a man at the back looked petrified. No one was too hurt.”

Aryelle Hendricks, 25, who works at the office opposite to where the accident happened, said: “I heard a really really loud bang at about 12:55, five minutes before lunch. No one thought anything of it but then there were lots of police cars.

“I saw four people upstairs. One women was right at the front and could have been distressed. Police cars arrived and cleared people from my side of the road.”

It was not immediately clear how may passengers were on the bus.

Pictures of previous incidents show that the roof frequently gets ripped clean off on such frontal impacts, flying over the heads of any passengers on the top deck. Bus roofs are usually made of one solid sheet of strong but lightweight material, such as fibreglass or other composites, which avoid the vehicle being top-heavy (and reduce fuel consumption and pollution). With relatively thin struts and windows supporting the roof, this kind of impact tends to detach the roof in one - as shocked Londoners have become the latest to witness.