DETROIT — Michigan's Amish community is expected to band together to care for the relatives of the six victims who were killed Tuesday in Tuscola County when the van they were riding in was T-boned by a truck whose driver ran a stop sign.

Authorities said police dispatchers received a call at about 4:45 p.m. Tuesday reporting a crash between a pickup truck and a van with 10 people inside in Gilford Township. The township is about 15 miles east of Bay City and about 15 miles west of Caro.

Deputies with the Tuscola County Sheriff's Office said the van was occupied by an Amish family and traveling west on M-138 when it was struck by the truck as it traveled south on Vassar and ran a stop sign. Multiple passengers were ejected from the van and the pickup.

The Tuscola County Sheriff's Office didn't release any names of the victims Wednesday or an update on those who were injured.

While crashes involving Amish victims have been reported in Michigan, the victims in Tuesday's incident were in a van. Amish people don't drive motorized vehicles, and use horses and buggies for local transportation, but families often hire people with vans for longer trips, said Steven M. Nolt, director of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies and a professor of History and Anabaptist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.

"It’s not uncommon for Amish families to hire a non-Amish driver (who owns a van) to transport them places that are further than buggy-driving distance," Nolt said in an email. "This might be a trip to a doctor’s office 30 miles away from their home or it might be an interstate trip of hundreds of miles.

"There is no Amish community in Tuscola County, Michigan, so the Amish involved must have been traveling through the county from someplace to another," Nolt said. "How large a 'hole' such a loss would be in the community would depend on which community they were from – some Amish communities in Michigan are fewer than 100 people and others include more than a thousand people. The emotional loss is large regardless, but the impact size in terms of an entire family being killed would be different in a community of 80 people than in a community of, say, 1,200 people."

"The Amish ... community will band together," said Kevin Williams, who writes a syndicated Amish newspaper column, in an email. "There will be very large funerals that will draw thousands, many coming from states away to pay their respects.

"The Amish will lean heavily on their faith and view the accident as God's will," Williams said. "Their grief is tempered by their faith."

Michiganians who live in the area where the crash occurred were reeling from the incident.

"My husband and a friend came upon this on their way home from work and tried to help as they waited for emergency responders," Rebecca Reed VanTol posted on the Tuscola Sheriff's Office Facebook page. "I know it's still weighing on his mind and heart."

Officials for neighboring Fairgrove Township posted a statement on the municipality's official Facebook page about the crash.

"In the wake of yesterday's unimaginable tragedy, Fairgrove Township and Gilford Township Board of Trustees would like to take a moment to send our condolences to the families impacted by yesterday's accident," it said. "The impact of a loss of this magnitude is immeasurable."

They also said the boards of both townships "recognize that being a small community means the impact goes beyond just the families."

The statement urged those struggling with the incident to contact the Tuscola County Health Department at 1 (800) 462-6814. They could also turn to the McLaren Hospital in Caro or the Hills & Dales Healthcare facility in Cass City.

Others also expressed their thoughts about the crash on Facebook.

Shannon Scruggs-Allen wrote: "These were all Amish on their way to Gaylord. Potentially a Mennonite driver. I was taking my Amish clients home this evening when their son called me, looking for his parents to tell them. A tragedy."

Tuesday's crash is the latest in which members of the Amish community were involved.

Last week, six Amish people were injured after an SUV crashed into a horse-drawn buggy in southwest Michigan.

Last month, a Livonia man was arrested on drunken driving after a Fourth of July crash with an Amish buggy in Gladwin County. A 22-year-old woman and a 16-year-old boy who were in the buggy were injured.

In March, an 8-year-old girl was killed and a 12-year-old seriously injured in a crash between a vehicle and a horse-drawn buggy in Van Buren County.

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