INDUSTRY CONNECTIONS
School Districts Prepare for New Year With Mock Bus Crash Drills
In August, student transporters from California to Texas to
Virginia received training for the unthinkable: a mass-casualty, multi-injury school bus crash. Many eyes were trained on a mock accident in Harrisonburg,
Va., not for shock appeal but for learning purposes, as the city and local emergency personnel teamed with a local school district. Craig Mackail, director of operations and communications at
Harrisonburg City Schools, told School Transportation News that everyone involved agreed it was a good way to hone their skills before the new school year. In this year’s drill, a school bus hit a street lamp in a parking lot at James Madison University. Immediately emergency responders were on the scene, following protocol and rescuing students on the bus. Te Houston Independent School District Transportation De-
partment also conducted a mock disaster drill in August as part of its new counter-terrorism training. During the training, par- ticipants learned basic techniques such as conducting pre- and post-trip inspections, looking for suspicious items and immedi- ately reporting it. HISD Transportation stages the mock disaster drill event ev-
ery year before the start of school. To add a dose of realism, an older-model school bus was overturned on its side and used as a hands-on learning lab for bus drivers and attendants. It allowed them to practice skills such as student management and emer- gency evacuation. Both of these districts’ bus drills involved staged human
injuries to reinforce the first-aid training that bus drivers and at- tendants received previously. “We can never prepare our drivers and attendants too much,”
said HISD Transportation Senior Manager Chester Glaude. Meanwhile, St. Mary’s (Ohio) City Schools held its own emer-
gency preparedness training for its drivers as well as about 200 transportation staff members from seven other local school districts. Te Auglaize County Educational Services Center spon- sored the Aug. 15 event. Dan Grothause, the district’s transportation supervisor, said
the event was part of the first area school transportation driver’s workshop hosted by St. Mary’s. Each year, a different local district provides in-service transportation training for the county. A transit-style school bus donated by Cardinal Bus Sales in
Lima was tipped onto its right side to simulate the crash after- math. Six district school bus drivers participated in the training session, one as the driver of the fateful bus and five others as par- ents. Grothause said 11 students from 6th to “12th grade played the part of injured students on the bus. First responders prac- ticed cutting into the bus to extricate passengers and provided mock first aid. In central California, local fire departments, ambulance ser-
14 School Transportation News Magazine October 2012
Harrisonburg (Va.) firefighters remove an “injured” passenger during a mass-casualty drill held at James Madison University.
vices and the California Highway Patrol held training using a bus donated by Lucia Mar Unified School District that was on its way to the salvage yard, according to local news reports. Tat drill simulated a multi-vehicle crash in which the school bus over- turned onto two cars. Five Cities Fire Authority Engineer Mark Searby told the Santa
Maria Times that the drill was the first of its kind for the agency. “We’re going to make the most use out of the donated bus,”
Searby said, noting that the training exercise touched on a variety of rescue skills, including cutting into the bus, and was expected to last throughout the day.
First responders from nine local agencies and eight school districts participated in emergency training held by St. Mary’s (Ohio) City Schools. Approximately 200 transportation personnel were in attendance.
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