A school bus transporting thirty students was involved in a rollover crash on a country road in northeast Missouri, injuring dozens of children and sending them to a nearby hospital for emergency care.
The Missouri Highway Patrol indicated that the Lewis County C-1 School District vehicle was travelling eastbound on a two-lane road near the intersection of Highway C and Juniper Avenue Tuesday afternoon when the bus driver, 62-year old John W. Logan of Ewing apparently ran off of the road onto the right hand shoulder. The driver then attempted to correct the mistake and turned the wheel too hard to the left, sending the vehicle across the left hand lane into a ditch where it overturned onto its roof. One child’s arm was apparently pinned under the bus and was later freed. The bus was carrying students from both the elementary school and the high school
The children were taken to various local hospitals, including five that are currently in good condition at Blessing Hospital and one in satisfactory condition at S. Louis Children’s Hospital. Blessing Hospital immediately went into what is called “Code Yellow” status when they received notification of the accident. This means that they were prepared for multiple community injuries and all of the hospital’s staff were on call in case they were needed.
According to Brad Billings, Blessing Health System CEO, “We’re very much prepared for this type of event, we practice it all the time. The patients that are coming in are being immediately addressed by physicians and other personnel. Family members that are coming in are being escorted to an area where they can congregate and get information on what’s going on. Once we get the notice and the code yellow goes out, people begin to assemble and every individual has a job. We have a command center and in that command center, a lot of the information we get is gathered and information about what needs to happen is communicated.”
According to those who went to the scene, from the looks of the bus the situation could have been much, much worse. The accident is currently under investigation by police.