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In what could have easily become the greatest talk-show studio-audience transportation disaster since a van of Hour Magazine fans accidentally careened into the Pacific Ocean in the mid-1980s, never to be heard from again, a busload of audience members headed to a Dr. Phil taping crashed through a fence and into the lawn of a Hollywood church just moments ago:

A private charter bus packed with people heading to a taping of the "Dr. Phil" show crashed this morning in Hollywood, and the driver reported that the brakes failed as she exited the 101 Freeway at Gower St, authorities said.

Nineteen people were taken to local hospitals, said Brian Humphrey, a spokesman for the L.A. city Fire Department. No one was reported seriously injured, he said. Humphrey described the ramp where driver lost control as being at a "steep descent."

The bus struck a car before crashing through a wrought iron fence and striking two trees on the property of the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood in the 1700 block of North Gower Street, church officials said. [...]

The "Dr. Phil" show tapes at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, a short distance from the accident scene.

Thank heavens the injuries reported so far we're only minor: In a few months, the rattled survivors will surely look back on all of this as merely a Hollywood adventure, laughing about the mishap at a raincheck-taping, when Mr. Phil jokingly points to each and every one, and in his best mock-Oprah intones, "YOU get a scar! And YOU get a scar! Everybody GETS a SCAR!!!"