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Carrie Vanrenterghem, who traveled with her two daughters to the same excursion on a bus directly in front of the one that crashed, said she saw the bus being towed away on their way back from the Mayan ruins.

\"We didn't understand or know what it was,\" the Oregon resident told ABC News during a FaceTime call after she arrived back on the cruise ship.

Vanrenterghem said that one of the sides of the bus was \"smashed\" after it fell on its side and that the \"whole windshield was gone.\"

\"You could tell that somebody had probably gone ... through the windshield,\" she said, describing the scene as a \"hard\" sight to see.

\"The seat belts were tied below the seats, so no one told us to put the seat belts on,\" Fontes Jacques said. \"But my wife’s sister saw them and she asked us to put it on. Her sister did take it off later. I put it on, but I took it off later. And we were the two of us hurt a little. So that’s the lesson of the day, to always wear a seat belt.\"

\"PHOTO:
ABC News
PHOTO: At least 12 people were killed in a tour bus crash on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
>

Vanrenterghem said that had she and her daughters booked their excursion through the cruise line instead of an outside travel agency, they could have \"easily\" been on the bus that crashed, along with their fellow cruise passengers.

\"Most likely, we would have been on that bus,\" Vanrenterghem said, adding that the close call made her \"realize that life is short and family is important.\"

The Celebrity Equinox is on a seven-night cruise that departed from Miami on Saturday and had scheduled stops in Key West, Florida; Costa Maya and Cozumel, Mexico; and George Town and Grand Cayman in the Bahamas, according to Royal Caribbean. The Serenade of the Seas departed from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Friday, with stops in Key West; Roatan, Honduras; Costa Maya; and Cozumel.

\"PHOTO:
Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
PHOTO: Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.'s Quantum-class cruise ship, the Anthem of the Sea, sits moored at the Cape Liberty Cruise Port in Bayonne, N.J. on Oct. 6, 2015.
>

During a briefing Tuesday afternoon, U.S. Department of State spokeswoman Heather Nauert said officials were following the news of the bus crash \"very closely\" and described it as \"certainly a tragedy.\"

Mission staff from the U.S. were en route to Mexico Tuesday to assess the situation, she said.

ABC News' Conor Finnegan, Ben Gittleson and Scott Withers contributed to this report.

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