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CARROLLTON, KY., MAY 15 -- Twenty-seven members of a church group, most of them teen-agers,

were killed Saturday night when a school bus taking them home from an

amusement park burst into flames seconds after it collided head-on with

a pickup truck traveling the wrong way on an interstate highway,

officials said.

The victims, most of whom died of smoke inhalation before being

burned beyond recognition, had spent the day at Kings Island amusement

park north of Cincinnati and were going home to Radcliff, near Fort

Knox, when the crash occurred shortly before 11 p.m., state police said.

Thirty to 40 other passengers were injured, at least eight seriously,

in the crash, which was among the worst bus accidents in U.S. history.

The bus was carrying 67 teen-agers and adults, many of them military

dependents, from the First Assembly of God Church in Radcliff, about 35

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miles south of Louisville.

The bus driver was among the dead. The driver of the pickup,

identified by police as Larry Mahoney, 34, of Worthville, was in serious

condition at a Louisville hospital tonight. State police spokesman Glenn

Walton said his blood was tested for drugs and alcohol.

Walton said Mahoney's 1987 Toyota pickup had been traveling north in

the southbound lanes of Interstate 71 for "some distance" before

slamming into the bus, apparently rupturing the gas tank. Flames tore

through the bus from front to back, survivors said, leaving only the

back door and windows as escape routes.

State Medical Examiner George Nichols told relatives who gathered

here today that he would not allow them to see the victims' remains.

"The picture. . . of their children in that room is not what they have

in their memories or wallets," he said.

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The wreckage of the bus, with victims still aboard, was hauled by

flatbed truck to the Carrollton National Guard Armory early this

morning. The bodies were laid out in bags in the armory's large

formation room, and state medical examiners spent most of the day

conducting autopsies and matching dental records to the victims.

They stopped work about 8 p.m., and the bodies were loaded onto

refrigerator trucks behind the armory. Autopsies were to resume Monday

Walton said the records were supplied by victims' relatives, who came

by Army bus to Carrollton this morning and gathered at the Holiday Inn

about a mile from the armory. Walton said Nichols met with about 60

family members at the hotel and urged them to go home and await word on

when and how to claim the bodies.

Nichols "told them it would be best to try to remember your loved

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ones the way you last saw them," Walton said. "Remember them by the

smiling faces in the pictures you have on your walls. Nothing would be

gained by coming to the armory and viewing their remains."

A memorial service was held at the hotel. The parents and other

family members were secluded in the banquet room, where Red Cross

workers were taking down family medical histories in an effort to

identify the dead.

Most of those who were killed, 19 females and eight males, were found

in positions indicating that they had been trying to reach the bus' rear

emergency door when they were overcome by smoke, Walton said.

At least eight of the injured were in critical condition, police and

hospital officials said.

Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived here

tonight to begin their investigation.

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"I just heard a crash, felt the impact . . . and looked up and saw

flames," said 14-year-old Wayne Cox, an asthmatic who suffered smoke

inhalation. "They spread pretty fast. . . . I was pinned. Everything was

pretty wild. I was under a lot of people. That's probably what saved me

from getting burned."

Jason Booher, 13, also an eighth-grade student at Radcliff Middle

School, told the Associated Press that he and another youth helped pull

people out of the bus. Booher said he assisted survivors on the ground

outside the back door, while a Meade County High School student, Jamie

Hardesty, stood just inside the door and pushed people out.

{Truck driver Patrick Thomas Presley said he arrived on the scene

shortly after the accident and pried open the emergency door and began

freeing the passengers, but a second explosion hampered rescue efforts

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and there was nothing he could do, United Press International reported.

{"The driver of the bus was trapped between the steering wheel and

the seat from the impact," Presley said. "He was trying to help as much

as he could by yelling to tell the kids to get off the bus but he was

burning at the same time."

{"We saw several kids sit there and burn as we was watching the fire

and the bus go up," Presley said. "But there was just no more that we

could do. There was no way that we could get into the bus unless we was

to get burned and catch fire ourselves."}

Carroll County Coroner James Dunn said the bus had been refueled just

before the accident. He speculated the gas tank may have ruptured,

spewing gas all over the bus and passengers. Walton said it was unclear

how fast the vehicles were traveling.

A commercial bus company executive told the Associated Press today

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that school buses are not designed for high-speed highway use. "A school

bus is . . . designed to transport a high number of students over rural

roads at relatively low speed," said Mike Sodrel, operator of an

intercity charter service and director of the American Bus Association,

a trade group.

Sodrel said a school bus weighs about half as much as the average

26,000 pound intercity bus and does not use diesel fuel, which has a

lower flash point than regular gasoline.

What is believed to be the worst bus accident in U.S. history

occurred in 1976 when a school bus carrying 53 Yuba City, Calif., high

school students plunged off a freeway ramp near Martinez, Calif.,

killing 28 students and a teacher.

In 1958, a school bus plunged into the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy

River in Floyd County, Ky., killing 26 children and the bus driver.

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