HEADLINES Fire Safety and the Final Rule on Seat Belts
By Stephane Babcock No matter how many times we all went through it as students,
the lessons we learned in fire safety were something that never should have been ignored during our annual school bus training. A school bus fire, although rare, is something that every student should at least be prepared for. And now, because of a federal final rule directed at all small school buses with a gross vehicle weight of 10,000 or less, a new element must be added to evacuation train- ing — seat belts. “Since the federal law only covers a small number of school bus-
es, this will not be such a huge process,” said Charley Kennington, director of Innovative Transportation Solutions in Houston. As this would largely affect special needs students, some are
focusing on how to train students and drivers to exit a bus within the estimated two-minute timeframe before a bus can become fully engulfed in smoke and/or flames. “I have seen more emphasis on this aspect of training within
the past couple of years but definitely feel that a lot more training in regard to evacuations should be done,” said Jean Zimmerman,
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appropriate child safety restraint systems. “Te only thing that changed for us is the length of time the
drill takes, and that may have added 30 seconds at the most,” said Pam Haynes, head of transportation and maintenance at Skyline CAP Head Start in Madison, Va. “It is surprising how 3- and 4-year-olds can undo the restraints so quickly.” At Choctaw Nation Head Start in Durant, Okla., Transportation
Supervisor Linda Gothard moved a car seat into the classroom so the children could learn how to buckle and unbuckle themselves, cutting down on evacuation time. Monthly drills also keep the children prepared for a worst case scenario. For the drivers, Go- thard calls in the local fire department, who bring in a smoke machine to show how quickly a bus can fill with smoke. “I do training on using the seat belt cutters. We used seat belts
that we had removed from an old bus and practiced cutting them so the staff could see how to correctly use them,” added Gothard. “We also have the older children sit by a younger child who may need help.” n
I am hoping that the mandatory seat belts on Type A buses will ‘force’
people to think more about the sage evacuation of students. ❞ — Jean Zimmerman, School District of Palm Beach County
supervisor of occupational and physical therapy for the School District of Palm Beach County (Fla.). “I am hoping that the man- datory seat belts on Type A buses will force people to think more about the sage evacuation of students.” But where should the training focus? Should students be
taught to remove the seat belt themselves? Although this would be a great timesaver, Zimmerman said she does not know if stu- dents would understand the concept that this should be the only time to undo their seat belt. Collaboration with classroom teach- ers could help transporters decide whether a student could fully grasp when the appropriate situation arose. But there are other tools that are available, both living and inani-
mate. Monitors could quickly evacuate students when working in tandem with drivers. Also, belt cutters would need to find a perma- nent home somewhere within the reach of the driver. “I would believe there would need to be a change in school bus
driver training on how to use a belt cutter and the importance of verifying a belt cutter is available before leaving the transporta- tion office,” said Kennington, stressing the need to find a good spot to store it so that it is safe from the students but it is still accessible to the driver while in a seated position. For Head Start agencies, this type of training became neces-
sary six years ago when the feds instituted regulation 1310, a subsection of which mandates the use of height- and weight-
24 School Transportation News Magazine February 2010
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