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1) Trooper injured by semi tire
2) Video crash
3)Chippewa Falls, bus hits semi
4) Bus driver loses job for using bathroom
5) 3 people in court for plotting to kill bus owner
6) bus on fire video
7)Update for bus fire carrying katrina victoms plus update on 8/9/06
State trooper injured by tire from semi April 8, 2006
A state trooper was injured early yesterday when a tire came off a tractor-trailer and hit him as he did a traffic stop on the Ohio Turnpike, the Ohio Highway Patrol reported.
Trooper T.J. Vaculik of the patrol’s Swanton post suffered a broken collarbone, severe bruises, and swelling in his right arm after the 5:18 a.m. accident, the patrol said. He was treated at Medical University of Ohio Medical Center. The truck’s driver was identified as Robert Logan of Toledo.
The patrol said the accident occurred as Trooper Vaculik walked to a vehicle he had stopped for speeding. The right rear tandem wheels came off a passing tractor-trailer rig and struck the patrol car. One of the wheels hit the trooper. Unaware that the wheels had come off, Mr. Logan drove to the Indiana line, where he was detained for investigation, troopers said.
Bus crash caught on video cam
Dramatic Crash Caught On Drive Cam - video powered by Metacafe
Bus carrying students from band competition crashes, five dead
BY JEFFREY HAGE jeff.hage@lee.net
A charter bus carrying about 55 members of the Chippewa Falls High School band collided with a semi truck early Sunday morning, killing five passengers.
Thirty others were injured, with 24 being transported to regional hospitals by ground ambulances and six being airlifted by helicopter, according to Capt. Doug Notbohm, northwest regional commander of the Wisconsin State Patrol. Injuries ranged from serious to non-life-threatening, he said.
The accident occurred about 2 a.m. in the westbound lane of Interstate 94, about five miles northwest of Osseo. The Chippewa Trails motor coach slammed into the semi, which was blocking both lanes of traffic after leaving the road, rolling over, and jack-knifing while the driver tried to get back on the road, Notbohm said.
“The driver of the semi left the travel portion of the roadway for several hundred feet. When he tried to get back on, he jackknifed across the road,” Notbohm said.
Four people were killed instantly and needed to be extricated from the bus. A fifth died hours later at Luther Hospital in Eau Claire, Notbohm said.
The driver of the semi survived the crash and was in an Eau Claire hospital Sunday afternoon with non-life-threatening injuries, Notbohm said.
The semi was owned and operated by Whole Food Products of Munster, Ind., and was operating on a regular route between Indiana and Minneapolis, Notbohm said. The driver of the truck was an Indiana resident.
The bus driver had little time, if any, to react to the semi when he came across it on the road, Notbohm said.
“I don’t believe there was much time for the bus driver to react to a total, dynamic lane closure in front of him,” he said.
State Patrol investigators were on the scene all day Sunday. Three of the state’s top motor carrier crash experts were called in, as were experts from the Minnesota State Patrol, Notbohm said. The National Transportation Safety Board will also be involved in the investigation.
“We have a good idea of what happened, but we’re not going to assume anything. We’re going to let the facts determine what happened, and that will be determined through further investigation,” he said.
“With the motor coach being flat and the semi being flat, they met with an incredible force,” Notbohm said.
Notbohm said the driver of the truck was giving details to the first state trooper arriving on the scene, Notbohm said. The driver indicated that he didn’t fall asleep and there are no indications that drugs or alcohol were a factor in the accident, nor was weather a factor, he said. The driver was not taken into custody but authorities continue to have contact with him.
The bus was the first in line of four buses returning to Chippewa Falls from UW-Whitewater, authorities said.
It took as long as 1 1/4 hours to evaluate the injured and get them medical care, but under the circumstances authorities moved as quickly as possible, Notbohm said. There were as many as 60 police and EMS officials on scene, he said.
The three other buses were stopped while authorities tried to account for all the passengers returning from Whitewater.
“We weren’t looking for who was supposed to be on the bus, but who actually was,” Notbohm said.
Authorities conducted an actual roll call, which Notbohm said upset some students because they felt that in light of the tragedy they were held at the scene longer than they should have been and wanted to return home to their families. Pastoral help was brought to the scene to provide spiritual counseling for students and staff while the scene was being processed.
updates to this accident: the driver of the semi is still awaiting trial. He is charged with five counts of homicide by negligent operation of a vehicle, and 28 counts of reckless driving that caused great bodily harm or reckless driving that caused injury in connection with an Oct. 16, 2005 accident in which a Chippewa Trails bus slammed into Kozlowski’s overturned semi on Interstate 94 near Osseo.
BUS DRIVER LOSES JOB over bathroom trip
Posted 04.10.2006 by The Dumpster
The ongoing debate regarding the fundamental "Right to Poop" was recently highlighted in Grand Blanc, Michigan, where a bus driver says a trip to the bathroom cost her her job. When nature called in an urgent fashion, the driver, who has been diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), left a number of elementary school children unattended on the bus to attend to an even more urgent number: two.
The diarrhea summons and the bus both arrived at the school about ten minutes before classes began. Students in grades K-5 were on the bus; but the desperate driver, out of time to call another adult to the vehicle, told older students to supervise while she "went" inside. Although she took the bus keys and was gone for no more than three or four minutes, her supervisor was standing by the bus when she returned. Ach, that's probably enough to give one yet another batch of butt pee!
Claiming she "had no choice," the bus driver said she "couldn't have stopped what was happening." Like many IBS sufferers, she "didn't have the luxury of advance notice."
Parents' reactions were mixed. One whose kindergartner rode this bus said she's concerned about children being alone, but she's not sure the driver is to blame. "I would think they would try to come up with a solution by having someone there to relieve the (bus drivers) if they can," she said. Or, this writer wonders, give them a can to relieve themselves in?
Two other parents said they sympathize with the driver, but don't think children should be left unattended. "If she knew that it was a fireable offense, then she probably should have been fired," said one mother who has two children at the school. (A fire-in-the-hole offense, this writer again wonders.) Another parent, acknowledging, "I'd probably be upset," doesn't know whether the driver should have been fired.
And yet again, the sacred rights of shitters are trampled into the, err, mud.
This brings to the forefront two issues of import to this site: first, the restroom-related responsibilities of school bus drivers (see "Bus driver sends child into stranger's bathroom"); and second, the rights of IBS victims, of which this writer is one. Since it is well-known that bus driving causes stress (ask Ralph Kramden), should every prospective driver be screened for IBS? Should Imodium be standard-issue, along with the tip jug and the bowtie? Or perhaps the tip jug could serve a double "dooty" in extreme circumstances such as these. The internal dialogue rages: "to bus or to bust?"
Murder-for-hire suspects appear in court
Friday 7-21-06
Three men charged with plotting to kill a Fountain Valley bus company owner appeared in court Friday and agreed to have their arraignment continued.
Johnny Thompson, 32, of Moreno Valley; Nathan Price, 22, of Perris; and Richard Collins, 39, of Gardena were held at the Orange County Jail with bail set at $1 million each. They will return to court Aug. 4.
The trio is accused of being part of a plot to murder charter bus company owner Linh Nguyen. Police said he was targeted by a business rival and shot in the arm and neck in a July 2005 attack.
The trio was arrested after a yearlong investigation. More arrests are expected.
Nguyen's company, Xedohoang Charter Buses of Fountain Valley, takes passengers up and down the West Coast.
6)bus on fire go to video
7)update for katrina bus fire link to video
update.....WASHINGTON — Federal investigators probing the bus fire that killed 23 Bellaire nursing home residents as they fled Hurricane Rita were told Tuesday that bus fires break out six times a day in the United States — usually with no injuries.
Harm is avoided because passengers do the one thing the elderly, wheelchair-using patients from Brighton Gardens could not: They get off the bus.In the first two days of hearings on the Sept. 23 fire near Dallas, bus experts also told the National Transportation Safety Board that there were numerous problems that contributed to the tragedy:
As 38 patients and six staffers made their way to a sister nursing home in Dallas, the 1998 MCI motorcoach, operated by the now-defunct Global Limo of Pharr, was poorly maintained.
Its front tires were the wrong size. Its back right wheel was improperly lubricated, causing friction and heat to build up and ignite a flat tire — the second of the trip.
Within minutes, the fire spread to the passenger compartment, filling the bus with heavy smoke and exploding several of the patients' oxygen tanks.
And, witnesses testified on Tuesday, the 5-pound fire extinguisher that is standard equipment for such buses is useless in putting out a tire fire.
Suppressing such a blaze normally requires the type of fire suppression equipment and protective clothing used only by professional firefighters.
In the end, though, the passengers were likely doomed by a poor evacuation plan that placed them aboard a bus that was not designed to transport people with their special needs, witnesses said.
"The message here is: Use the right vehicle to transport the right population of people," said Paul Ford, a retired firefighter who works as a safety manager for Delaware Transit. " ... I'm not against technology. I'm not against improvements (in bus safety equipment). But if that bus were occupied by 43 or 53 young, physically able people, we would not be here today."
Ford, who showed investigators a photo of a smaller bus designed to transport disabled people, said the decision to use a regular motorcoach would have been understandable if it were necessary to get them out of the immediate danger zone in a crisis.
"But I would also suggest that 15 hours away is well outside the immediate danger zone," he said.
Two passers-by who helped evacuate some passengers testified that the fire appeared to be small when they pulled over on Interstate 45 on their way to work shortly after 6 a.m.
Jason Saulsbury and Drew Wood, occasionally choking up with emotion, testified that the bus's interior lights were on and they could see the passengers in their seats.
They called 911, took turns boarding the bus to pull passengers out, and tried to break windows to vent the heavy smoke so they could see.
Within minutes, during his third trip inside, Saulsbury said, "the smoke was too much. It was overpowering."
Shortly after, he heard the first of six or seven explosions.
The safety board resumes its hearing today and plans to release a final report early next year on the causes of the fire and recommendations for preventing similar incidents.
Chairwoman Kitty Higgins said investigators are interested in learning why bus fires may be increasing and what can be done to track the fires, which don't show up in federal traffic statistics because they aren't reported as accidents unless they involve a collision or a rollover.
Investigators also heard testimony about fire detection and suppression systems, installed on newer buses, that alert the driver to unusual heat sources and attempt to hold the fire at bay long enough for passengers to exit.
No such system has been designed to detect a fire in the wheel well, however.
patty.reinert@chron.com
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