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Officials scan procedures after students stranded

Two school buses got stuck in snow during storm

By: Nick Martin

Posted: 10/12/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

SCHOOL officials are examining their procedures and talking to everyone involved after 29 kids in a school bus got stuck for 51/2 hours near Sandilands in last Thursday's snowstorm.

A second bus was stuck near Woodridge.

"They were warm, they had access to a home, they were safe and secure," Division Scolaire Franco-Manitobaine superintendent Denis Ferré said Thursday. "The biggest thing is, the students are safe, they got home OK."

Ferré said the bus, shared by the DSFM and Seine River School Division, was taking children from schools in La Broquerie to their rural homes south and east, when the bus went into the ditch on a snow-covered road near Sandilands.

Fortunately, said Ferré, the bus was only 100 metres from the home of a student on the bus.

The bus driver immediately radioed the dispatcher, who notified First Student, the U.S.-based private company that contracts bus service to several school divisions.

"He called the tow company, but they couldn't get there," Ferré said. "The parents were all contacted and told it was going to be a long time."

Ferré said several teenagers on the bus walked the smaller kids to the house.

One student, in direct sight of the driver, walked about 200 metres up the road to where a Manitoba Hydro vehicle was parked.

A Hydro spokesman said Thursday the vehicle was not big enough to pull the bus out of the ditch and had itself been stuck several times as it tried to restore power in the area. The Hydro crew offered their cellphone, but were told the school bus had a two-way radio.

Meanwhile, First Student's transportation supervisor was fighting his way through the storm and eventually came across a CN Rail crew, who not only came to the scene to pull the bus out of the ditch but also to follow the bus throughout its route to make sure it didn't get stuck again, Ferré said.

Ferré said the school's principal is talking to the students, after hearing of some details that differed from person to person.

Seine River superintendent Mike Borgfjord said reports from students on the bus were that they were close to a house and children went in groups to use the bathroom and get warm.

A second bus, this time a Seine River bus with high school students, got stuck near Woodridge. Normally, another bus would come to fetch the kids, but the roads were too bad, Borgfjord said.

In the case of the second bus, some parents picked up their kids in all-weather vehicles. The rest of the students got home after the snowplows reached them.

"There's always constant communication," Borgfjord said. "We used a lot of fuel that day keeping the buses warm."

In both cases, Borgfjord said, "We've had no complaints from the parents about what happened."

Ferré said the two divisions made the decision not to send the kids home from school early because many were too young to be left by themselves if no one was home.

RCMP Sgt. Line Karpish said the Sprague detachment was first alerted to the school bus situation at 7 p.m. that day, but was having its own problems in the storm chaos -- power was out, the roads were clogged and cruisers were running out of fuel.

Police had been assured the children were not in any danger, she said.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 12, 2012 A11

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