Swollen Members Tour Bus Destroyed By Train In Colorado Springs
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Only days after completing a tour across Canada, Swollen Members’ tour bus was destroyed in Colorado Springs, CO on Monday night after it was hit by an oncoming train. The accident happened just after midnight when the group’s bus got stuck on a railway crossing. Minutes later the railway barrier went down signaling a train was coming, and the three remaining members of the Swollen Members crew had seconds to get out of harm’s way. Fortunately no one was harmed during the crash.
“Everyone is lucky to be alive,” commented tour manager BJ Smith. “Everything happened so fast we didn’t have time to do anything but get off the bus. From the time the bus got stuck, to the second the train impacted it, was under three minutes. As soon as we heard the railway barrier go down we could hear a train was coming, so we literally had 45 seconds to get off the bus and get as far out of the way as possible. If anyone else would have been on the bus with us they would have been dead because there wouldn’t have been enough time to wake them up and get off the bus.”
Having just completed two months of touring, Madchild, Prevail, Trey Nyce, and Rob The Viking had all flown home just days prior to the incident, while tour manager BJ Smith and the remaining crew members were driving back to California. Video footage of the wreckage can be viewed online at www.kktv.com/home/headlines/79290927.html
“This morning I got news that our tour bus, ‘The Black Pearl’, got hit by a train in Colorado Springs. Luckily everyone was able to get off just in time, because the bus was totally destroyed,” commented Prevail. “The spot where the train impacted was where we would have been sleeping if we had we been on the bus. It’s scary to think how fragile life can be when something like this happens.”
Swollen Members were touring in support of their new studio album, “Armed To The Teeth”, which debuted at #146 on the Billboard Top 200 and #5 on the Heatseekers charts.