Twenty-six people were taken to hospital with injuries that are not believed to be life-threatening after a Toronto-to-New York bus crashed in upstate New York early today.

The crash happened at 2:30 a.m. ET on Interstate 81 near Nedrow, N.Y., about 10 kilometres south of Syracuse.

The Pine Hill Trailways bus, which had 52 people on board, T-boned a car that had hit a guard rail minutes earlier and was left disabled in the passing lane of the highway. The southbound bus then rear-ended a tractor-trailer that had pulled over at the side of the road to help.

It's not known how many of the passengers, if any, are Canadian. CBC News has learned that 31 passengers boarded the bus in Toronto. The bus then made stops in Buffalo and Rochester, N.Y.

The driver of the car, who was later found walking down the highway, will face charges of impaired driving.

Emergency crews work for 2 hours to free driver

Assistant fire Chief Richard Nemier of the Nedrow Volunteer Fire Department in Syracuse was among the first on the scene.

"Luckily the truck driver had the foresight to move the truck forward and that limited the injuries," he told CBC News. "Had he not done that, it would have been a definite fatality."

It took emergency crews two hours to free the bus driver, who suffered the most serious injuries.

Trailways operates intercity buses throughout upstate New York.

Onondaga County sheriff's detective Jon Seeber said the bus was heading from Toronto to New York City and that there was a language barrier between some of the passengers and rescue crews. Seeber said the injured passengers suffered largely lower body injuries, as well as complaints of head and neck pain.

The bus left Toronto on Wednesday evening and was scheduled to arrive in New York City around 6:30 a.m. ET Thursday. The uninjured passengers were taken to Syracuse's bus station, where some boarded another bus for Manhattan, while others arranged their own transportation back home.

The bus is owned by Trailways of New York, a Hurley, N.Y.-based company that also operates Adirondack Trailways, New York Trailways and NeOn Bus.

The American Bus Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group that issued a statement on behalf of Pine Hill, said the company operates buses daily between Ontario and New York City.

Dan Ronan, an ABA spokesman, said company officials are still trying to determine where the injured passengers are from, he said.

Robert Johnson told Syracuse's WSTM-TV that he boarded the bus in Rochester and was awake when the crash occurred, but many of the other passengers were sleeping at the time.

"All I heard was a boom and my head hit the seat; I mean mad noise, it was crazy," Johnson said. "I never experienced that in my life and I'm still scared to death by it."