Beginning
It started Tuesday, with a phone call. Our next door neighbor just dropped her kid at school. Don’t try to get on Interstate 70, she said. Traffic is completely blocked. The alternate route, State Route 40, runs right by the new Intermediate School. And it’s wall to wall semi-trucks, trying to pick their way around the Interstate blockage. And there’s smoke, lots of smoke, coming from over by the highway.
Social media beat the local news. There’s a major crash on I-70, a bus and a semi-truck. At first it was a head-on crash of a “Greyhound”, then a school bus, and finally landed on a charter bus full of school kids. I-70 is closed, both ways, the five miles from SR 158 at Kirkersville to SR 310 at Etna. The east bound traffic is routed onto SR 40 at Etna, and is inching along, past the school, to SR 158. All of the westbound traffic is doing the reverse, just as slow.
All Hands
TV channel 4 is on the way – but all they have right now is the highway traffic cam. And the silent picture is all flames and emergency lights. A “Level 3” mass casualty event is “called”. Five Life-Flight helicopters lift off, then get cancelled. Every nearby jurisdiction: our local West Licking Fire, Reynoldsburg, Violet Township, Pickerington, even Columbus sends squads and fire trucks. It’s no longer a matter of political boundaries: everyone is “on deck”.
And they need to be. There were fifty-seven kids and adults in the charter bus, a high school marching band from “Tusky Valley” High School near Canton, going to perform in Columbus. There was a minor accident father down the road. Traffic came to a stop — except for the semi-truck. He smashed into the car behind the bus, then the tractor (of tractor-trailer) plowed into the back of the bus, and burst into flames. The front of the bus hit another car and truck.
We now know that six were killed, three kids on the bus, and three adults in the car behind, two teachers and a parent. Eighteen more, including the bus and truck driver, were sent to hospitals in Columbus. The other kids and their band leaders were huddled on the roadside, watching their bus, the car and the truck burn. The middle school band director was desperately trying to get the injured kids out of the back, away from the smoke and flames. Folks from surrounding traffic tried to help, easing kids out of windows, getting them to safety. They managed to save a lot. But, even after the first emergency personnel arrived, there was no reaching the back.
Responses
The local school district, “our” district, sent buses to get the kids off of the highway. The Red Cross implemented their emergency plan, all welcomed into a local Etna church. Counselors from our school and others came in, to help the kids reach and later reunite with parents, and to be the “first responders” as the reality of what they experienced kicked in. And even later, counselors were available to the police and fire who first arrived on the scene. They had to deal with six people killed, and with all of the injured kids. They did their jobs well, but the vision of what happened will stay. As an old friend, a fire chief, once told me – those memories never go away.
The Tuscarawas Valley school district is small, 1200 total students; less than a hundred per class. They lost kids, two seniors and a sophomore. They lost teachers and parents. There’s so much grieving to do, funerals to plan, and multiple physical injuries to heal. And they have a whole set of kids with trauma trapped in their minds; forever missing those friends and teachers. They are a small place, towns like Bolivar (ball-la-ver) and Zoarville and Mineral Springs. It will fall on the school to help them through this. But there really is no “end” to this; just getting beyond it to a future. And it’s not the future they expected.
Hugs
And in our larger community, there are memories as well. The first responders, the bus drivers, the Red Cross volunteers at the church, all carry this memory with them. And a lot of us do too. We drove over the nearby bridges to see the aftermath of burned out truck, trailer, bus and car. It’s random, another community’s tragedy happening in “our town”. But it’s real for us, none-the-less. It happened here.
Parents in “Tusky Valley” hugged their kids for the last time Tuesday morning. They didn’t even know.
Our parents hugged their kids a little closer Tuesday night.
