SCHOOL BUS CRASH REPORTS 2007

“Absolutely Terrifying”
Two Students Seriously Hurt After Vehicle Hits Utility Pole
Thursday, January 18, 2007

Kentucky State Trooper Shain Stephens walked by a Grant County school bus that ran off the road Wednesday, hitting a utility pole.

Amber Henson, 12, sustained cuts to her face and arm from glass shattered in Wednesday's bus wreck.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Ky. - Twelve-year-old Amber Henson minced no words when she described the bus crash that sent her and 16 other Grant County Middle School students - two with life-threatening injuries - to the hospital Wednesday.

"It was horrifying," she says. "Absolutely terrifying."

With her face speckled with glass cuts and her arm wrapped in gauze, Amber winced as she eased into her dad's burgundy Cadillac Wednesday morning outside the St. Elizabeth Medical Center emergency room in Williamstown.

Four of her classmates were taken to larger hospitals after the accident.

One was in critical condition at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and another in critical but stable condition at University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington following the crash, Kentucky State Police Maj. Lisa Rudzinski said.

Grant County Schools spokeswoman Nancy Howe refused to identify those two youngsters, but said they appear to have suffered the most serious injuries.

Another student, who had been airlifted to Children's Hospital in critical condition following the crash, had improved to fair condition by Wednesday afternoon, Rudzinski said.

The fourth student was treated at St. Luke West Hospital in Florence.

Amber was among 13 of the less seriously hurt who were treated at the Williamstown hospital and released to their anxious parents in the hours after the crash.

Bus driver Angel Young-Howe was treated and released from St. Elizabeth Hospital South in Edgewood.

School officials said she has driven for the district since August 2004, though they did not know whether she had any previous crashes or safety violations.

Three hours after the 7:50 a.m. crash, Amber's father, Tony, was still

picking tiny shards of window glass from his daughter's hair.

And Amber was still thinking about the bloody and chaotic scene inside the bus after it veered off Dixie Highway and slammed into a utility pole, catapulting the seventh-grader and many of her classmates from their seats and through the air like rag dolls.

"I flew onto the floor and one girl I know landed on top of me; she broke her wrist," Amber said. "Everybody was screaming and I was bleeding real bad, but I got up and couldn't feel my legs. I know one kid was unconscious and this other guy ... he was hurt the worst. I think he lost an eye. ... It was horrible."

Grant County School Superintendent Don Martin said the accident occurred just after youngsters were picked up at Mount Zion Elementary School in Crittenden for transportation to classes at the middle school in Dry Ridge. But about eight miles down U.S. 25, just south of Sherman Newtown Road, Amber said the bus suddenly dropped off the right side of the road.

"She (the driver) swerved that way, then she swerved back ... and we went off the edge and crashed," Amber said. "I was toward the back on the side that got hit, right next to the window. Glass was everywhere."

Amber knew that something big had hit the rear left quadrant of the vehicle.

But she didn't learn until after the crash that the bus had struck a 60-foot utility pole, nearly snapping it in two.

Amber said the bus driver told the most severely injured youngsters to stay on the bus until paramedics arrived. Thanks to Gail King, that help was quick in coming.

She lives in a gray frame farmhouse across from the crash site and rushed to the scene after her children awakened her when they heard something that "sounded like a bulldozer tipping over outside."

"It was total chaos," she said. "The kids' faces were covered with blood.

Others were unconscious. Glass was everywhere. I couldn't do much, but I brought the kids who were not hurt so bad in here because they were upset and they needed to get away from seeing all those kids who were hurt so bad and call their parents."

Once she got the students into her house, "we all circled around and I said a prayer with them that their schoolmates would be okay."

"I've seen a lot of crashes out there, but this was the worst," she said.

Emergency workers converged on the scene and shut down the two-lane thoroughfare. Then they began transporting most of the children to the nearest hospital- St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Williamstown.

Hospital Communications Manager Christa Moore said staff there has trained for such an incident involving a mass number of patients, and Wednesday morning that paid off.

"Fifteen (children) came here and two of those were flown (to other hospitals) ... but we treated 13 here," Moore said.

"St. Elizabeth Grant County works closely with the schools here. We use them in mock disaster drills to prepare for incidents like this. We had to call some (staff) in, but everything worked well."

Tony Henson said he was quickly notified, but was never told where to find his daughter. After a trip to the school, he learned she might be at the hospital and that's where the two were reunited several hours after the crash, he said.

Kentucky State Police are reconstructing the crash to determine precisely what happened and whether any charges should be filed.

State police spokesman Trooper Shain Stephens said initial witness statements indicate the bus dropped off one side of the road, then veered across the oncoming lane into the utility pole.

At the crash scene, there was ample physical evidence to support that version of events.

An arc of fresh tire tracks was visible in the rain-saturated earth alongside the southbound lane.

The tires' imprint crosses Dixie Highway before sinking into the earth again on the opposite side of the highway, where the utility pole shows a fresh break, just behind the spot where Grant County School Bus No. 62 came to a stop.

On the bus's badly damaged left rear quadrant, long blood stains trailed from shattered windows where blue vinyl-covered seats partially protruded from the wrecked vehicle. In the dark brown dirt around the tires, blood tinged the ground crimson.

Kids like Amber, who went through it, say it will take some time for them to recover, physically and mentally.

"I like school - math is my favorite," Amber said. "But that was terrifying.

I never thought anything like that would happen, but it did."

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