Residents of a long-term care facility in the Lake Tahoe area are welcomed home after being evacuated from the Caldor Fire, which had burned nearly 222,000 acres as of mid-October, when the wildfire was at 98 percent containment.


“It’s like a family,” McKinney said of the drivers and


staff for his district’s 50 school buses. “It’s an honor to work with them every day.” With extreme weather being an increasingly com-


mon occurrence, McKinney said he and his team are constantly receiving weather service and emergency management updates, taking advantage of alerts that are especially detailed and accurate because of the high number of oil refineries in the area, which could be at risk during storms. When heavy rain is expected, his staff moves buses to high ground. But during Harvey, for example, they split their buses up between the two locations so that extreme wind at one location wouldn’t wipe out the whole fleet. When wind is expected they arrange buses with the older ones on the outside, “trying to protect our fleet as much as possible,” McKinney said. In the days and weeks after the hurricane, buses and


drivers continued working to relocate and transport stu- dents and families who were displaced by the storm. Evacuating and transporting local residents and first re- sponders is a common mission for school buses in crises,


48School Transportation News • NOVEMBER 2021


and sometimes a legal obligation. During the Caldor Fire in the Lake Tahoe area this summer, for example, the Lake Tahoe Unified School District’s buses evacuated residents. Transportation Supervisor Christy Blach noted that


while the evacuation of South Lake Tahoe was sur- prising, dealing with wildfires and other crises—from mudslides to winter storms, mass power outages to bears—is a regular experience. Wildfires have always been an issue in California,


but they’ve gotten more frequent and intense in recent years, a trend only expected to accelerate. “Every year we get wildfire smoke, but this year was in-


credibly horrible,” said Blach, noting extra air filters were installed in buses and schools. “As we were getting ready to bring kids back to school, the Caldor Fire started get- ting closer and closer. We had meetings with emergency management to figure out what’s really happening, is it really coming, what do we have to do.” Given driver shortages, Blach drives several times a


week herself, including in the areas most affected by the fire after the blaze was contained. She said the gratitude


PHOTO COURTESY OF CHRISTY BLACH, LAKE TAHOE UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT

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