As Swollen Members rapper Mad Child told Exclaim!, he was fortunate to overcome a dangerous drug addiction before the band completed their latest album, Armed to the Teeth. However, the band recently faced a much more literal kind of train wreck when their tour bus was struck by a train in Colorado.
On Monday (December 14), Swollen Members had completed a show in Colorado Springs. Swollen Members Mad Child, Prevail, Tre Nyce, and Rob the Viking had flown back to Vancouver, while tour manager BJ Smith and the band's entourage were en route to California in the bus.
Due to a lack of traction, the bus got stuck on a railroad crossing. Just minutes later, the barricades lowered and a train was on the way. In a split-second decision, all on board left the bus.
BJ Smith recalls the experience in a statement, saying, "Everyone is lucky to be alive. 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."
Swollen member Prevail also released some words, saying, "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. 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."
After the collision, it took four hours for emergency crews to put out the fire engulfing the bus. The train took minimal damage.
On Monday (December 14), Swollen Members had completed a show in Colorado Springs. Swollen Members Mad Child, Prevail, Tre Nyce, and Rob the Viking had flown back to Vancouver, while tour manager BJ Smith and the band's entourage were en route to California in the bus.
Due to a lack of traction, the bus got stuck on a railroad crossing. Just minutes later, the barricades lowered and a train was on the way. In a split-second decision, all on board left the bus.
BJ Smith recalls the experience in a statement, saying, "Everyone is lucky to be alive. 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."
Swollen member Prevail also released some words, saying, "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. 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."
After the collision, it took four hours for emergency crews to put out the fire engulfing the bus. The train took minimal damage.
