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“All of a sudden, you felt a big jolt, like we jumped over a curb or something,” Beaton said Wednesday from his hospital bed in a telephone interview.

Then it got worse, much worse.

“After the first big jolt, we hit something else … must have been the bus shelter. I just saw the rows of seats pushing back towards me as the roof of the shelter started cutting through the bus,” Beaton recalled.

The seat in front of him pressed hard into his legs, breaking both instantly.

“I was trapped. My knees were pinned between the edge of my seat and the seat ahead of me. It’s probably the worst pain I’ve ever felt,” said Beaton, who said he’ll be off work for months.

“I feared that I would lose my legs for sure, due to the circulation being cut off for some time.”

It was a terrifying scene, he recalled.

“Everyone was just screaming and nobody in my row could move,” he said.

It was at that point that some passengers on the driver’s side came to their aid and “just helped us breathe” and asked if we could “wriggle free.” Then the firefighters came.

“The firefighters used the jaws of life to cut the seats away. Then they realized there were people at the back that needed help too, so the firefighters started smashing windows in the back to work at both ends of the bus,” Beaton said.

When firefighters cut Beaton free from the mangled seats, he fell to the floor and said he couldn’t walk. “I couldn’t stand.” Two firefighters carried him to a smashed-out window and he was carried down to safety by two firefighters on the outside, both on ladders propped up against the bus.