Rescue workers from several area squads took 30 fifth-graders and adult chaperones to NorthEast Medical Center, where most were treated and released for injuries ranging from cuts and scrapes to back pain. Three, including the driver, remained hospitalized today.

The chartered bus veered off of I-85 and onto the Lane Street exit ramp, striking a guardrail, as several students tried unsuccessfully to rouse the driver, members of the group told rescue workers.

The bus continued to the top of the ramp, crossed Lane Street and headed down the entrance ramp to I-85, said Robert Earnhardt, assistant chief of the Mount Mitchell Volunteer Fire Department.

Swerving off the pavement, the bus ran down the grassy embankment between the road and the interstate. It sideswiped a stand of trees, snapping some and uprooting at least two.

Rescue workers said those trees — the trunk of one ended up under the bus — probably kept the bus from flipping over on the hillside. They also did considerable damage to the bus.

The hospital admitted three people, all adults, said NorthEast spokeswoman Carol Lovin. They are: Kim Cole, 36, a chaperone who suffered a broken leg; Ronald Driver, 38, a chaperone, with a back injury; and James Hinson, 68, the bus driver, with an irregular heartbeat.

Lovin said it was still unclear this morning whether Hinson’s heart problems began before or after the bus crashed. “That’s the million dollar question. We do not know that.”

The American Coach bus was carrying 24 children and 21 adults from Roberta Smith Elementary School in Hampton, Ga., north on I-85 around midnight when the driver either fell asleep or lost consciousness.

Four passengers told China Grove firefighter Jeff Gledhill they “knew they were in trouble when he got up to the top of the ramp and didn’t stop.”

Earnhardt, who was among the first to respond to the wreck, said the scene was controlled chaos.

“The children, they were panicking, crying, normal scaredness in a situation like this,” he said. Once he saw the magnitude of the accident, Earnhardt called “EMS and anybody who could get out here.”

Rescue workers had to be careful. The bus sat leaning toward the interstate and rocked when they got on board, Earnhardt said.

Some of the damage, an axle sticking out from the beneath the front of the bus and a rear wheel bent toward I-85, helped stabilize it, they said.

Sheet metal crumpled on the left side of the bus — the side that rammed through the trees. Spider-web cracks laced the windows, and one window in the rear was completely shattered. A student had been sitting under that window, Earnhardt said.

One panel hung off the side, its yellow emergency light flashing.

The bus’s rear bumper lay at an angle on the ground, connected on the right side, with part of the exhaust system trailing behind it in one of the ruts the bus dug in the ground. A rear panel above the bumper — with a large blue “How’s My Driving?” sign — curled back toward the on-ramp.

Emergency vehicles lined the entrance ramp, blocking traffic from using it for nearly two hours.

Asecond bus carrying students and adults from East Clayton Elementary School, also in Clayton County, Ga. near Atlanta, was not involved in the crash. Avan caught up to that bus on I-85 and informed them of the crash, Earnhardt said.

Abus, loaned from a local church, took the uninjured riders from the crashed bus to NorthEast, where they and the riders on the second bus waited in the hospital cafeteria. Officials later transferred them to Beverly Hills Elementary School in Concord, where the Red Cross set up a shelter and provided food.

The chaperones were contacting parents this morning and declined to be interviewed.

Mike Downs, director of Cabarrus County Emergency Management, said the students were still shaken up, and they were disappointed because taking the trip was “something they had been working on since the first day of school.”

He said the chaperones from East Clayton Elementary were deciding this morning whether to continue their trip. The students and chaperones from Roberta Smith Elementary were returning to Georgia today, he said.

Earnhardt said the trip could have ended worse.

“They were lucky,” he said. “I’d say the good Lord was with them. They were very lucky.”