A Sobering Simulation

NAPT exercise brings home importance of emergency responders to school bus events

Ryan Gray | Senior Editor

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — Train vs. school bus.

At least dozen presumed dead.Scores more seriously injured. Multiple fire companies en route.

Such is a synopsis of an emergency call from the scene of a catastrophic collision outside of Kansas City. Fortunately it was all an act.

Except for those unfortunate enough to have been in Conasauga, Tenn., or in Fox River Grove, Ill., one can only imagine the horror of a train smashing into a loaded school bus. Or involved in one of the 34 other known train-school bus crashes since 1902 involving a school bus fatality. (see www.stnonline.com/stn/data_statistics/railroadcrossings/rail_chart1.htm)
One of the pupil transportation community’s worst nightmares was role played the morning of Nov. 7 outside of Kansas City during the NAPT’s 32nd Annual Conference. A couple hundred attendees from across the nation watched as local emergency personnel responded to a simulated accident involving a freight train and a school bus.

The morning was especially veiled in a dense fog, apropos for such a horrible incident, no matter how staged.

Three motorcoaches pulled into the parking lot of the Community of Christ Temple in Independence, which borders a railroad track. And the gravity of the event was immediately felt by all. Several students playing the part of the injured roamed aimless along the grassy banks of the rail grade covered in red paint to simulate multiple lacerations. Meanwhile, dozens of others lay motionless all around the train and bus, which was on its right side lying across the railroad tracks in front of the locomotive. Others were “trapped” inside the bus or beneath it.

After triage was set up, hazardous waste units laid down a thick foam on the locomotive to demonstrate how to halt a possible toxic or fuel spill,
There was some talk before the exercise that attendees might actually see the train hit the school bus. But, in the end, a crane lowered the school bus on its side at about a 60 degree angle across the rail tracks. Then, a seam was cut on the left hand side of the bus to allow a wrecking ball to simulate the point of impact.

“Of course being here and watching this awesome exercise motivates you to go back and do even more than what you already do,” said Pam McDonald, the transportation director for Southern California’s Orange Unified School District.

She said her department currently practices with the SWAT team and police department on school bus emergency procedures, and there are initial plans to use an actual bus similar to the Kansas City simulation.
“It’s really good to see the firefighters try and cut open the bus because a lot of them have never done anything like that before. It looked really difficult, and it took them a long time,” she added.

Battalion Chief Joseph Lay of the Independence Fire’s Emergency Medical Services said the exercise called on the mass casualty plan implemented throughout the entire Kansas City area.

“Basically that’s what we followed,” he said. “Afterward, we’ll critique the crews over what went wrong and what we can do different next time.”

NAPT’s ongoing “Leadership in Action” event is known for addressing potentially catastrophic situations and keeping industry officials abreast of the best prevention and response information in a truly shocking manner. The exercise was the second catastrophic event staged by the industry for training purposes, as two years ago in Cincinnati at the 30th NAPT Annual Conference, the local bomb squad detonated several pounds of C4 explosive on a school bus to demonstrate a terrorist attack. This year’s conference was an ideal opportunity to expand the industry’s knowledge, and to assist emergency responders in preparing for such an event, especially as the Kansas City area boasts the second largest rail yard in America. Operation Lifesaver also offers exceptional programs in both Missouri and Kansas, said NAPT executive director Mike Martin. This year’s conference venue brought together the ideal confluence of circumstances and factors for the simulation and training exercise.

“I’ve had this idea in my head for 11 years,” he said. “Kansas City is the perfect opportunity to make this happen.”

The Nov. 7 live-action training event, held as part of NAPT’s General Session “Leadership In Action: Emergency Response at a Railroad Grade Crossing” and co-hosted by NASDPTS and the Mid America Regional Council (MARC), simulated a train crashing into a school bus with children onboard at a railroad grade crossing and the aftermath. NAPT said the event was part of ongoing school bus industry training to deal with the reality of today’s world.

“I cannot imagine a more effective training tool for the bus driver trainers than an actual video of a train/bus accident,” said Larry Riggsbee, executive director of the Tennessee Association of Pupil Transportation. “I expect that it will be rather shocking, and it will no doubt reveal the bus always loses.”

While the Conasauga, Tenn., bus-train collision involved a school bus from Murray County School District in Georgia, Riggsbee said, following the accident the Tennessee state government examined every grade crossing and upgraded many with crossing gates.

“It is not as scripted as you might think,” Martin added on this year’s simulation. “The goal of the folks on the ground in Missouri is to make this as real an experience for our people as emergency responders as possible.”

The session featured special training issues and the opportunity to learn from a post-event debriefing. Additionally, a discussion of the exercise with Battalion Chief Joe Lay of the Independence Fire Department followed. The simulation not only created a practical learning experience for school bus industry officials, but also provided a realistic and valuable training exercise for Kansas City metro-area police, fire and rescue teams.

NAPT notes that preparing for a possible emergency situation is a responsibility and essential business practice for an industry that holds a special position in American society and has a unique obligation to parents and the children entrusted to pupil transportation leaders each day. As such, the Leadership In Action exercise is part of a commitment that the nation’s school bus systems are not only safe and efficient but also that industry professionals are trained to prevent many dangerous situations from occurring and respond effectively to those that are unavoidable.

“God forbid a district has to deal with a train-school bus crash, but it does happen,” Martin said. “Our real goal is to try to make people understand how much you really need to be prepared and how much they won’t know if they don’t know. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Shanna Thompson, associate editor, contributed to this report.