I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. It's now considered the worst disaster in Minnesota history, and the horrifying images certainly will endure in my memory for years to come.
As you might expect, a lot of attention was placed on the school bus that was on the bridge during the collapse. I don't know if it qualifies as a miracle that none of the passengers was killed, but it's pretty close. The vehicle, which was carrying 62 people, is estimated to have dropped 30 or 40 feet as the bridge buckled underneath it. Credit has to be given to the sturdiness of the bus for helping to minimize the injuries to the passengers and driver.
But credit must also go to the people who assisted in evacuating the more than 50 children on the bus, which was headed back from a swimming trip organized by a social services group. Those heroes included staff members of the social services group, as well as passers-by, who helped to evacuate the children through the emergency exit and lead them to safety off the bridge.
One of the heroes was Gary Babineau, whose pick-up truck was on the bridge when it collapsed. He said he was leaving the scene when he heard screams and crying coming from the school bus. He immediately ran over to assist, helping to move children from the bridge to the road below. "Anyone would have done the same thing," he modestly told a Minneapolis radio station.
Babineau also told the radio station that the children who were evacuated from the bus were so confused and terrified that they wanted to get off the bridge immediately, even though it was safer to walk farther down the bridge, where the elevation was 7 or 8 feet instead of 15. "They were so shaken up that they weren't listening," he said. Had they fallen off the bridge at the higher elevation, they could have been injured more during the rescue than in the bridge collapse itself.
Key to this discussion, then, is the importance of knowing how to evacuate children from a bus in an emergency, and the importance of keeping them under control once they've been evacuated. No one on the school bus could ever have expected that the bridge would collapse, but the same rules for emergency evacuations apply. More attention to the importance of emergency evacuation drills is in order.
Until next time.
