Bus crashes; kids safe

Jace Radke and Karen Zekan

Wednesday, March 31, 1999 | 11:12 a.m.

Thirty-two Henderson fifth-graders were alive and well this morning after their charter bus banged its way down a 35-foot embankment along Interstate 15 Tuesday night.

Returning home from a spring-break trip to San Diego, where they had visited Sea World, the children and five adults -- the driver and four chaperones -- were plunged into terror about 10:15 p.m. Tuesday when their bus rear-ended a tractor trailer.

The collision took place on northbound I-15 near Mountain Pass, Calif., 55 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

The bus driver, identified by police as Charlie Burger, 63, of Las Vegas, was admitted to University Medical Center in critical condition, but none of the students from David Cox Elementary School needed more than treatment for bumps, bruises and sprains at area hospitals.

Police and witnesses were calling it a "miracle" that the bus did not roll while banging into the truck on the way down the embankment.

"There is no way that the bus shouldn't have rolled on that steep of a drop," Sgt. Paul Schroeder of the California Highway Patrol said. "There was a higher power at work here tonight, and if you don't believe in God, then it must have been physics."

A passenger in the truck -- the truck did roll -- was admitted to University Medical Center in stable condition. The passenger was not identified by name but was said to be the wife of the driver, Gary Ray Sanders of Andover, Iowa, who was treated at UMC and released. The truck was hauling strawberries.

A Cox teacher also was admitted to UMC and was reported to be in fair condition this morning.

The accident occurred just south of the Nipton Road exit.

California Highway Patrol troopers were still investigating, but preliminary evidence and witness statements led them to believe that the bus struck the rear of the truck, the force of which knocked both vehicles off the east side of the road.

Police reports said the truck rolled as it plummeted down the embankment, which has a slope of about 45 degrees. But the bus, while colliding with the truck several times on the way down, never rolled.

A witness, truck driver Russell Perry, said he was less than a half-mile behind the bus and saw its lights disappear over the side of the road.

"If the bus had rolled, there would have been a lot of dead people out there," Perry said.

Perry and another truck driver ran down the embankment to help the chaperones get the screaming children out of the bus, the front end of which became pinned in the twisted wreckage of the tractor trailer. Other children were rescued by the Clark County Fire Department.

"We just helped as many as we could and got them into blankets," Perry said. "They were all scared and worried."

All of the injured people were taken to UMC, St. Rose Dominican Hospital in Henderson and Desert Springs Hospital in Las Vegas.

Twenty-six students were taken to St. Rose by a Gaither Coach Tours bus that stopped at the scene to help. The bus was empty and on its way to pick up a ski tour in Colorado.

"We stopped, and they needed a bus to take the kids to the hospital," driver Frank Whitmore said. "The kids were pretty skittish about getting on another bus, but mostly they were worried about their teachers and the bus driver."

Rod Davis, president and CEO of St. Rose, said none of the students and adults treated at his hospital was admitted. All were released by 4 a.m., he said.

"Some of them said the bus was airborne. It must have been a terrifying experience for them," Davis said.

The students were part of a group of 77 students, teachers and chaperones from Cox, who had visited Sea World on a fifth-grade spring-break trip. The group was on the last leg of its return trip Tuesday night after making a stop in Barstow, Calif.

The students left Las Vegas on two chartered buses at 7 a.m. Monday and were scheduled to return at 10 p.m. Tuesday night. Parents waiting at the school to pick up their children met the first bus as it arrived at 10:20 p.m., but the other bus never returned.

"We just kept waiting and no one could tell us anything, and you could see people were starting to worry," said Jacquelin Kondo, parent of Kevin Kondo, 11, a passenger on the second bus. "My husband got to the school at just after 11 p.m. and said he had heard about the wreck on the news.

"I just started to cry. I couldn't stop."

Kevin Kondo, interviewed as he walked out of St. Rose about 2 a.m. today, said that everyone panicked when the bus hit the truck.

"There was a big crash and then everyone started screaming and everything got all shook up," he said. "We got outside and it was really cold, and some of the kids were scared."

Jacquelin Kondo was one of many parents and family members who arrived at St. Rose after midnight and dashed into the emergency room looking for their children. They found them bumped and bruised but otherwise OK.

David Deruelle, father of 11-year-old April, said there were several minutes when he was really scared.

"The only information I got at the school was that there had been an accident with a tractor-trailer," he said.

April Deruelle suffered a mild concussion and some abrasions.

Helen Romero said that her son, David Montenegro, 11, told her that the bus driver had fallen asleep at the wheel.

"He said that just before the bus hit the truck a teacher noticed the driver was asleep and yelled for him to wake up, but it was too late," Romero said.

The CHP had not yet had a chance to interview the bus driver, and Schroeder said it was too early in the investigation to determine a cause.

"We don't know the speeds that either vehicle was traveling, but we do believe that the wind had nothing to do with the crash," Schroeder said. "It was buffeting cars around pretty good, but it wasn't enough to move a bus or tractor-trailer."

The National Weather Service doesn't have a station near Mountain Pass but estimated winds to be about 25 mph at the time of the accident.

The bus and truck were in the slow lane of northbound I-15 when the bus struck the back of the truck.

The Clark County Fire Department's Heavy Rescue team freed those trapped on the bus, along with the driver of the truck and his wife.

"There was a lot of chaos out here when we arrived," Heavy Rescue Capt. Harold Wyatt said. "We had a lot of injured kids and people who needed to be extricated as quickly as possible."

Rescuers used ropes and baskets to serve as cradles to haul the injured up the embankment to waiting ambulances.

The last man freed was the driver of the bus, who was trapped for about two hours as rescuers cut off the front of the bus and used the "jaws of life" to pry away debris. The driver was taken to University Medical Center by helicopter.

"The driver was awake and answering questions," Wyatt said. "Considering how long he was out there, he was a champ."

Kim Bratton-Tubbs, spokeswoman for Coach USA, the charter service that transported the children, said she believed Burger had been employed by her company about a year.

She had not heard of any claims that Burger had fallen asleep, and instead emphasized that most of what was coming out this morning was speculation.

Bratton-Tubbs said drivers for Coach USA -- parent company of KT Services, Greyline Tours and Express Shuttle USA -- must possess commercial driver's licenses and submit to physical exams.

Motor coaches, she said, are equipped with seat belts only for the driver. Drivers, by law, are required to get eight hours of sleep between their shifts and are limited to working no more than 15 hours a day.

The accident shut down I-15 northbound for about two hours Tuesday night as ambulances and rescue personnel clogged the roadway.

At St. Rose, Clark County School District officials and officers with the Henderson fire and police departments helped link parents with their children. Their actions were consistent with drills the hospital undergoes regularly to prepare for such emergencies, Davis said.

The school district assembled teachers and school police at Cox Elementary after the accident to field calls from parents. District spokesman Ray Willis said that it is "not at all unusual" for schools to organize out-of-town field trips during spring break and that it is routine for return trips to take place at night.

Willis said the district will assess the accident for liability issues, a routine procedure whenever students or staff are injured.

"It would be the responsibility of our Risk Management Department to ferret out any and all issues related to liability and payments for medical treatment and any other ramifications related to cost," Willis said.

In addition to the driver, the adults on the bus included John Ward, formerly the principal of Cox, who was transferred to another school recently. The other adults, not identified by name, were the injured teacher, a head custodian and an office manager.

SUN REPORTER Ben Grove contributed to this story.

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