Towns observe anniversaries of school bus tragedies

Communities in Washington state and neighboring British Columbia recently marked anniversaries of severe school bus accidents that profoundly affected their residents.

Both tragedies occurred in late November in the mid-20th century.

In Chelan, Wash., 15 children and their driver died when their bus plunged into a frigid lake on Nov. 26, 1945.

A Wenatchee World article describes how the accident impacted the victims' families as well as others throughout the Lake Chelan Valley.

About 700 people attended a memorial service, and a small park and monument were built where the bus went into the water.

Marci Hale, who was born after her brothers were killed in the accident, recently told the Wenatchee World about how she is touched by the toys and money that people leave at the memorial.

"People do stop, and it does mean something to them," Hale told the newspaper.

Fifteen years after the Lake Chelan tragedy, a school bus in Lamont, British Columbia, was struck by a freight train while crossing tracks, killing 17 people on board.

On Saturday, locals gathered to remember the victims of the Nov. 29, 1960, crash.

In a Global News article survivors discuss their memories of the tragedy.

"I suppose I never did come to terms with it," Alice Sutherland, who suffered three skull fractures, recently told the news source. "The next thing I knew, I was climbing out of a piece of rubble that was the back of the bus."

Veronica Tovell, who also spent several weeks in the hospital after the crash, told Global News that "it was something you didn't discuss back then. It was put on the backburner, and time will heal."