Training school bus drivers to respond to inclement weather emergencies is a crucial part of student transportation safety training, but sometimes even the best training can’t fully prepare for the harsh reality of a real-life emergency situation.
Transportation Supervisor Kelly Bennett at Three Rivers Community Schools in Michigan confirmed for School Transportation News that this is how her team of bus drivers felt when a tornado suddenly appeared the afternoon March 6.
“On the day of the tornado, there was no indication that severe weather was approaching. No watches had been issued, and it seemed like a normal, beautiful day,” said Bennett.
Bennett shared that in-house training has led to Three Rivers school bus drivers practicing a variety of responses to emergency situations including inclement weather during Beginning Bus Driver School.
A local news outlet reported that the tornado was severe enough to down trees and rip roofs off buildings. Superintendent Nikki Nash shared a letter on social media March 8 saying that the “rapid and severe” weather emergency struck at the “most challenging time possible: During afternoon dismissal.” With many school buses already on the road transporting students home, it was crucial to act quickly.
Bennett explained that when the tornado warning sirens sounded, most bus drivers did not hear them because they were on routes, but the transportation office staff were alerted on their phones and through the radio. Dispatch then contacted the drivers immediately and directed the buses to re-route to safe locations at the nearest school building.
According to the local news report, within 10 minutes all students were accounted for.
Both Bennett and Nash commended the district’s school bus drivers for their quick response to the inclement weather emergency (Photo courtesy of Kelly Bennett)
Nash thanked the drivers and staff for their heroic actions and tornado response. “While we recognize that these emergency protocols caused significant delays and inconveniences for many of you, the safety of our students and staff is our absolute top priority,” she said. “I want to thank our students for their bravery, our staff for their quickly thinking and you- our families- for your patience and cooperation as we worked to ensure every child was out of harm’s way.”
Unfortunately, the district’s new transportation building that houses the district’s 20 buses “took a direct hit,” as the tornado passed through. Nash shared in her statement that they “lost the garage roof with several damaged vehicles, including buses in the parking lot.”
Bennett said that the damage was confined to the garage and did not impact the office, so transportation staff that were onsite during the tornado were unharmed.
“Due to the extent of the damage, we are unable to operate from that facility,” said Bennett. “In the meantime, we have returned to our old building, where the mechanic is handling repairs, and the office staff is now working out of the middle school. Although the transition has been challenging, we are continuing to adapt and make it work. Once the garage is secured, we will be able to return to operating out of the office.”
Tornado Response Hinges on Adequate Training
Bennett shared that her advice to other transportation directors “is that there is never such a thing as too much training, especially when it comes to safety.”
She continued that it’s imperative to make this safety training a priority, regularly review procedures during department meetings and investing in additional training opportunities beyond in-house resources.
“Our drivers are trained to prioritize safety above all else when transporting students. In emergency situations, I expect them to remain calm and maintain control, as their response will influence how everyone on the bus reacts,” said Bennett, adding that she emphasizes another facet of school bus safety, “clear and concise communication over the radio.”
She advised “keeping messages brief and direct so others can quickly understand and respond,” which aides safety efforts for both the 16 drivers in the district and the 1,194 students they transport each day.
The local media report also shared that the community banded together for recovery and rebuilding efforts, and the bus drivers drove their normal routes on Monday following the tornado response to ensure that routes were safe for students to return to school.
“Our thoughts and prayers of support go out to everyone who was personally impacted by this event,” stated Nash. “We know that the cleanup process will take days and even weeks, but our strength remains unshaken.”
TransAlta’s coal-fired power plant in Centralia, Wash., is among the facilities that received emergency orders from the U.S. Department of Energy blocking them from being retired. (Photo by the Washington Department of Ecology via Washington State Standard)
In an unprecedented use of federal authority, President Donald Trump’s administration has invoked emergency powers to force a series of retiring coal plants to stay open.
Utilities, states and grid operators have said the aging plants are expensive, in bad repair and no longer needed to meet regional energy needs. But Trump’s efforts to save the dwindling coal industry have forced plant operators to continue investing in the facilities — a move that some consumer advocates fear could mean billions of dollars in added costs for customers in dozens of states.
Trump has long positioned himself as a champion of coal, making it a centerpiece of his “energy dominance” agenda. The emergency orders issued by his administration claim that the grid is at risk of energy shortfalls, and the coal plants are needed to ensure a reliable power supply.
But state officials in many places affected by the orders say that’s not true.
“Rather than allowing the realities on the ground, the regulators and the utilities to make rational decisions about how to meet energy needs, we have the Trump administration trying to do Soviet-style central planning to push an ideological agenda that will drive costs to customers,” said Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office.
Under Trump, the U.S. Department of Energy has issued emergency orders to block the retirements of coal plants in Colorado, Indiana, Michigan and Washington state. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright has claimed that the power demands in various regions require the plants to stay operational.
Observers expect similar orders to be issued for most, if not all, of the dozens of coal-fired units slated for retirement during the remainder of Trump’s term. Utilities subject to the orders have said they will increase costs for ratepayers, and argue those costs should be borne by the multistate region to which they provide power, rather than just their local customers.
Despite their costs, three of the five plants being blocked from retirement haven’t produced electricity since the emergency orders went into effect, either because they need extensive repairs or because power demands have been met without them.
Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act gives the secretary broad authority to take temporary control of the U.S. electricity system during emergency situations. Until now, that authority had only been invoked during wartime or natural disasters. All of the Trump administration’s orders were issued before the war with Iran. Consumer advocates say Trump’s use of the act to overturn long-planned facility retirements is unprecedented, and likely illegal.
State officials, utilities and environmental groups have challenged all of the orders.
While such emergency orders can be issued only for 90-day periods, Wright has repeatedly renewed the orders before they expire.
The Department of Energy did not respond to a Stateline interview request.
Keeping coal online
Last May, Wright issued the first emergency order to prevent the shutdown of the J.H. Campbell Generating Plant in Michigan, just days before it was scheduled to retire. The plant has remained open since then, accruing $135 million in net costs through December. Consumers Energy, the utility operating the plant, is seeking to charge ratepayers in 11 states to recoup those costs.
Michigan Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel has appealed the order, while a coalition of environmental groups has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn it, arguing that the feds have failed to demonstrate a true emergency. That case is currently in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals awaiting oral arguments, which may take place in May.
State leaders in Colorado have appealed an order to keep a plant there open, while Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown, a Democrat, has sued the federal agency. Environmental groups have filed a lawsuit challenging the order in Indiana. Energy analysts say the Michigan case will likely be resolved first, and is expected to have major implications for the emergency orders elsewhere.
Douglas Jester, a former state energy official in Michigan, noted that Consumers Energy has had to pay extra to bring back staff, establish new delivery contracts for coal and catch up on maintenance. Jester now serves as managing partner at 5 Lakes Energy, a clean energy consulting group.
In his emergency order, Wright said the plant was needed to ensure energy reliability and reduce the risk of blackouts. His agency, in a statement issued last month, said the coal plants kept open by the emergency orders helped keep the power system online during Winter Storm Fern.
Coal industry leaders have made a similar argument, saying that growing energy demands require more baseload power, as opposed to intermittent renewables such as wind and solar.
The emergency orders are “very much needed,” said Emily Arthun, CEO of the American Coal Council, an industry trade group, “so that we can continue to have the energy just for our day-to-day lives,” said Emily Arthun, CEO of the American Coal Council, an industry trade group. “Coal plants, baseload plants, are critical to the well-being of our grid. Coal is needed at critical moments for energy.”
Some labor unions have also praised the orders as beneficial to their workforce.
But state leaders and consumer advocates argue that utilities and regulators have already completed detailed plans to replace the power the aging coal plants provided, through a mix of renewables, natural gas plants and battery storage.
It costs a lot of money to make sure that an old, decrepit coal plant is available to operate.
– Michael Lenoff, senior attorney at Earthjustice
“If you were to believe the Department of Energy, you would believe that more than half the country is experiencing an emergency around the clock,” said Michael Lenoff, senior attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental group that is suing the Trump administration to overturn the orders. “It costs a lot of money to make sure that an old, decrepit coal plant is available to operate.”
Lenoff and other environmental advocates have said the coal plants ran during the winter storm because the government forced them to, not because the grid needed them to meet power demands.
Even as his administration has declared an energy shortage emergency, Trump has tried to block new renewable projects from being built, including several offshore wind farms that East Coast states are relying on to meet their power demands.
Meanwhile, the administration has also authorized power generators to export electricity to Mexico and Canada, which may happen only when regulators have determined the U.S. has sufficient energy supply to meet its own needs.
“How can you authorize the export of energy to Canada from a Western market that you just declared is in an emergency status with shortages?” said Tyson Slocum, energy program director at Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy nonprofit. “It’s complete incoherence.”
Aging plants
Three of the five plants being blocked from retirement have yet to even produce electricity since the emergency orders went into effect.
The plant in Colorado suffered a failure in a steam valve that was not repaired because it was on the verge of retiring. The federal order has forced the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association to invest in repairing the plant, and the costs to keep the plant operational could reach $80 million a year even if it never produces power, said Toor, with the Colorado Energy Office.
“It’s very unlikely to actually operate even with this order,” he said.
Tri-State and the other utilities that own the plant have requested a rehearing of the emergency order, saying that keeping the plant open will be costly for their ratepayers.
In Indiana, one of the two plants targeted by the feds has suffered mechanical failures that would require extensive repairs.
“(The order) doesn’t even make sense because it’s not even really open,” said Ben Inskeep, program director at the Citizens Action Coalition, an Indiana-based consumer advocacy group. “You don’t want to throw good money after a plant you’re about to retire.”
Unlike the Democratic-led states subject to the other orders, Indiana’s leaders have welcomed the federal intervention. Republican Gov. Mike Braun issued his own executive order soon after the Department of Energy announcement directing state officials to evaluate ways to extend the life of the state’s remaining coal plants.
Meanwhile, the TransAlta Centralia coal plant in Washington state, while remaining in operational mode, has not supplied power to the grid since January, as the state’s energy needs have been met by more affordable sources elsewhere.
Democratic state Sen. Marko Liias sponsored a bill, signed into law earlier this month, that rolls back tax and regulatory exemptions that were granted to TransAlta under a 2011 agreement to gradually phase out the plant. The compliance burden will make it economically infeasible for the plant to operate again, he said.
“It’s crystal clear to the market that we’re not going backwards, we’re slamming the door and nailing it shut,” Liias said.
Consumer costs
While some states have pushed to close coal plants due to climate goals and pollution concerns, market forces have largely driven the coal industry’s decline. According to a 2025 analysis by the financial advisory firm Lazard, electricity from coal-fired power plants costs an average of $122 per megawatt-hour. That same amount of power can be produced for $78 from natural gas plants, $61 from onshore wind and $58 from utility-scale solar.
Some energy analysts say Trump’s efforts to keep fossil fuel-powered plants open could become very costly to ratepayers. A report published by Grid Strategies LLC, a consulting firm, found that as many as 90 aging plants could be subject to similar emergency orders during the remainder of Trump’s term. The analysis found that keeping those plants open could cost ratepayers anywhere from $3 billion to $6 billion a year.
“What the Department of Energy is doing is picking losers, the uneconomical plants that the utilities, the regulators, everybody involved agreed need to retire and be replaced with something cheaper and more efficient,” said Michael Goggin, who authored the report, which was commissioned on behalf of Earthjustice and other environmental groups.
Meanwhile, some consumer advocates say the orders have created chaos for utilities and energy planners. The operators of plants scheduled for retirement in the coming years no longer know if it’s safe to cancel their coal contracts, transition their workforce or defer maintenance on their facilities. And financiers may be wary of investing in new, cheaper energy projects that could be sidelined by orders to keep coal online.
“The administration has made clear that they’re not going to allow a coal-fired power plant to retire, regardless of whether or not it’s absurdly expensive to operate, whether it’s contaminating soil, air and water in that community, they literally don’t care,” said Slocum, of Public Citizen.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Andrea Pedro-Francisco was arrested on her way to work and sent to a Texas detention center a week before she was scheduled to have surgery to remove a large ovarian cyst. (Courtesy photo)
Andrea Pedro-Francisco was supposed to have surgery more than a month ago.
A cyst on her ovary has swelled to nearly the size of a tennis ball and is now at risk of rupturing or cutting off blood supply. The pain is so severe that her doctor prescribed her an opioid.
She’s only received Tylenol or ibuprofen for the pain since she was arrested on her way to work on Feb. 5 in Minnesota and shipped to a Texas detention center, where she’s waiting for a judge to decide whether her detention is even legal.
“I want to be able to go back to my family,” Pedro-Francisco, 23, said in Spanish in a video interview, wearing a navy blue sweatshirt and looking ashen. “I feel sad. I feel tired. I feel desperate to get out of here and see my family again.”
Her case has been taken up by a team of pro bono attorneys and even members of Congress, but to little avail.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Angie Craig, who represents the Twin Cities suburbs where Pedro-Francisco lives, sent inquiries to Homeland Security officials hoping to pressure them to provide adequate medical treatment.
Craig says she’s been stonewalled with demands for various forms and out-of-office messages citing the partial government shutdown. She said she considered flying to El Paso to conduct an oversight visit but the facility is currently in lockdown because of a measles outbreak.
“We are very worried she could have an infection right now … and the Trump administration won’t do a damn thing about it,” Craig said in an interview. “I don’t want Andrea to die.”
ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
Pedro-Francisco is one of 4,000 immigrants the Trump administration says it arrested during Operation Metro Surge — although it has not provided an accounting of all those arrests — with some 3,000 federal agents descending on Minnesota for what the Department of Homeland Security called its largest operation ever.
Many have been ordered released by federal judges who ruled their detentions unlawful. But many others remain languishing in federal facilities across the country even if, like Pedro-Francisco, they have no criminal record and have lived in the United States for years.
While the Trump administration repeatedly claimed to be targeting the “worst of the worst,” the vast majority of those arrested during Trump’s second term have no violent criminal charges or convictions, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security document obtained by CBS News.
Taken on the way to work
Pedro-Francisco left her native Guatemala for the United States with her mother to seek asylum in 2019 when she was 16 years old. They arrived in Minnesota with virtually nothing and debt from the journey.
They quickly built a new life. They found jobs cleaning houses, moved into a house in Burnsville, and joined a church. Pedro-Francisco sings in the choir and plays the bajo, a Mexican bass guitar.
Andrea Pedro-Francisco played bass guitar at her church in Minnesota before being arrested and sent to detention in Texas (Courtesy photo)
“I came here with my family to do something, to achieve something with my own strength, with my own hands. And after that, they took me away,” Pedro-Francisco said.
Pedro-Francisco was driving to work with her mother and a neighbor one Thursday morning when they were stopped by two unmarked vehicles. One parked in front and the other behind. Half a dozen masked men surrounded them, demanding to see their documents, she said.
She said she doesn’t know why they stopped her. There was no warrant for her arrest.
It could be they ran the license plate and saw a Hispanic name. Or because the federal agents believed three Latina women in a car was reason enough to initiate a stop. A federal judge appointed by President Trump found that Homeland Security has racially profiled Latino and Somali residents and arrested them without probable cause, which while unconstitutional, nevertheless yielded results as the Trump administration pursues mass deportations.
The agents put handcuffs on Pedro-Francisco and her neighbor.
Her mother pleaded with an agent to let her go, telling him there was no one to care for her children. She has two younger children, a 5- and a 1-year old, both U.S. citizens.
“‘Who’s going to take care of my children?’ I asked him,” said Pedro-Francisco’s mother in an interview in Spanish, choking back tears. She was granted anonymity due to her fear of retribution from federal officials.
“Then he said, ‘Okay, we’re going to let you go, but only today … If another group catches you, they’ll take you away.’”
She gave her daughter one last hug, and the agents placed Pedro-Francisco, handcuffed, in the back of the unmarked car.
Within a couple hours she was on a flight to Texas.
‘They treat us like animals’
Pedro-Francisco was taken to Camp East Montana, a troubled tent prison on the site of a former World War II detention camp for Japanese Americans at Fort Bliss near El Paso.
It was hurriedly constructed last summer to meet the growing need for detention space after the Trump administration enacted a policy of mandatory detention for many undocumented immigrants, even those who have lived in the country for years with no criminal history.
Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas on Sept. 7, 2025. (Photo by Paul Ratje for The Texas Tribune)
The detention facility is now ICE’s largest: around 3,000 people packed into long tent structures. Pedro-Francisco says she is kept in a room with around 60 people except for about an hour a day, when they are chained together and taken outside.
“They chain us up as if we had committed a very serious crime,” Pedro-Francisco said. “They treat us like animals.”
The ceiling leaks when it rains. The food is inedible. Pedro-Francisco says she’s lost around 10 lbs.
The crowded conditions have also made it a hotbed of disease, with outbreaks of COVID-19, tuberculosis and the measles.
With complaints of crowded quarters, medical neglect and poor nutrition mounting, ICE recently terminated the $1.3 billion contract with the company operating the facility, Acquisition Logistics. It had never run an ICE detention facility before — nor did it even have a functioning website.
When Pedro-Francisco arrived in early February, she wasn’t receiving any medication except the occasional Tylenol. The pain in her abdomen became so unbearable that within a couple days she was taken to a hospital, where she says a doctor confirmed the cyst yet declined to operate on her because she’s in immigration custody.
As the weeks have passed, she can feel herself getting sicker.
Here in the midst of suffering, pain and illness, my purpose is to be able to return to my family
– Andrea Pedro-Francisco
Instead of medical care, ICE has offered her another solution: self-deport. Every two or three days, she says, ICE officials enter their room to ask people to sign forms agreeing to voluntary removal.
Many have taken it, including a man from Minnesota whose lawyer said he only agreed because he was being denied medication for his diabetes.
“But my purpose, for me, here in the midst of suffering, pain and illness, my purpose is to be able to return to my family,” Pedro-Francisco said.
Caught in red tape and judicial delays
By swiftly transferring Pedro-Francisco to Texas, ICE has made it harder for her and other people arrested in Minnesota to challenge their detention through what’s called a habeas corpus petition. That seems to be by design.
Minnesota U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank wrote that he’s seen a “pattern of obfuscation” with ICE “attempting to hide the location of detainees, and thus, make habeas proceedings more difficult.”
Judges in Minnesota have been in revolt over the Trump administration’s policy of mandatory detention and repeated violations of their orders to release immigrants, even threatening the U.S. attorney with contempt.
While judges in Texas have also largely ruled against the Trump administration, the ultra-conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in its favor, making Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi more favorable venues for the administration to defend a policy that contradicts three decades of precedent.
Federal officials have said they simply ran out of space to hold people in Minnesota during an unprecedented surge in arrests.
Approximately 200 people detained in Minnesota have been transferred out-of-state and remain in detention centers across the country — in Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, Nebraska and Mississippi — according to Sarah Brenes, executive director of the Binger Center at the University of Minnesota Law School and one of the directors of the Minnesota Habeas Project.
By the time Pedro-Francisco was connected with a lawyer, she was already in Texas. Her case was taken up by attorney Asra Syed, managing partner at the Austin law firm Botkin Chiarello Calaf. She was referred to Pedro-Francisco’s case through the informal network of volunteer lawyers that sprung up during Operation Metro Surge.
Syed filed a habeas corpus petition to challenge Pedro-Francisco’s detention on Feb. 13 and mentioned her urgent need for medical attention. While the federal government usually has three days to justify its detention of a person, U.S. Judge Leon Schydlower gave the government more than three weeks from when the petition was filed to respond.
“She doesn’t have a way to get the health care that she needs unless she’s out of detention. And how is she supposed to get out of detention unless the judge rules on the habeas petition quickly?” Syed said.
In the interim, Syed filed two more motions asking the court to speed up Pedro-Francisco’s case and order the federal government to administer her prescribed medications and have her examined by an independent hospital physician. They went unanswered.
Syed also reached out to her representative, Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, who connected her with Craig. Democratic U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, who represents the El Paso area that’s home to the detention center, also got involved.
U.S. Reps. Kelly Morrison, Ilhan Omar and Angie Craig of Minnesota, all Democrats, arrive outside of the regional ICE headquarters at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building on Jan. 10, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The lawmakers attempted to access the facility where the Department of Homeland Security has been headquartered in the state. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
Syed became hopeful, but she and the congresswomen were quickly moored in ICE’s kafkaesque bureaucracy.
In order to conduct oversight, the congresswomen needed Pedro-Francisco to fill out a form authorizing the visit and for Homeland Security to share information about her. But there is no way for Pedro-Francisco to fill out or mail the form in detention. There’s no commissary to buy envelopes and stamps, Syed said. Pedro-Francisco also can’t sign releases giving her attorneys access to her medical records.
An attorney planned to visit the detention center to get Pedro-Francisco’s signatures in person. Then came the measles outbreak, which has stopped anyone from visiting detainees in person, be they attorneys or members of Congress.
Craig said she reached out to a senior DHS official but received a bounceback citing the partial government shutdown. Congressional Democrats are refusing to support renewing funding for the agency without reforms to what they say are ICE’s unconstitutional tactics.
“It’s just stunning, but not surprising at all, that … even as a congressional office, we haven’t been able to get her the help that she needs and deserves,” Craig said.
Her office has received some information from DHS about Pedro-Francisco’s condition — that they’re giving her an antidepressant and birth control pills.
But that’s at odds with what Pedro-Francisco says she’s receiving. She said she went days without even Tylenol to dull the unbearable pain, and then about a week ago also started receiving a prescription, though she’s unsure what it’s called.
Pedro-Francisco said she was also recently examined by a man in the detention center who conducted an ultrasound. He told her she didn’t have anything and gave her two pills to go to the bathroom, but she doesn’t trust anybody in the facility. She’s requested the man’s name and records of her treatment in detention to show her lawyers but has not received either.
Inadequate medical care and poor record-keeping have been documented repeatedly at Camp East Montana, even by ICE’s own inspectors, who found 60 violations in 50 days.
Pedro-Francisco’s case remains at a standstill. The federal government filed an answer to her habeas corpus petition justifying her detention as an undocumented immigrant “seeking admission,” as if she were just apprehended at the border, and cited the recent 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.
Now it’s up to a judge to decide, though when that will happen is unclear.
“I want to get out of here because I know that at home, where my family is, they can take care of me, and I can go to a doctor,” Pedro-Francisco said.
Madison McVan contributed translation.
This story was originally produced by Minnesota Reformer, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
A school bus driver in Oneida County died Jan. 5 after suffering a medical emergency and crashing into a snowbank, reported Syracuse News.
The crash was reported around 12:25 p.m. at the intersection of state routes 31 and 365 in the town of Verona, police said. Troopers confirmed that no students were on the school bus at the time of the incident.
State police spokesperson Trooper Jennifer Jiron said the bus driver was traveling west on Route 31 when he experienced a medical emergency and collapsed. The bus then left the roadway and came to rest on a snowbank.
Two other adults, a second bus driver and a school bus aide, were also on board. Neither was reportedly injured. Police said the two attempted to stop the bus, called 911 and began CPR on the driver.
The driver was transported to Oneida Health Hospital, where they were pronounced dead. The driver’s identity has not yet been released. First Student reportedly owns the school bus and was operating under contract with the Rome City School District.
Authorities reported no damage to the bus. The incident remains under investigation.
A routine ride home from school last month quickly turned into a moment of heroism when a Sand Springs school bus made an unexpected stop after the driver experienced a medical emergency. Thanks to the quick-thinking of a 9-year-old student, help arrived promptly and all students remained safe, reported News on 6.
It was a normal school bus ride for fourth-grader Kane Lee was until he noticed something was wrong. After the bus driver pulled over, Kane walked to the front of the vehicle and immediately realized the driver was unable to speak and needed help.
“She couldn’t talk, and I could tell by her face and stuff that she needed me to call someone,” Kane told local news reporters. “So, I called 911.”
Despite feeling scared, Kane stayed by the driver’s side until emergency responders arrived. “I didn’t want her to, like, pass out when I went back to my seat,” he said.
Kane also reportedly helped manage the situation inside the bus, comforting younger, frightened students alarmed by the sudden stop.
“Little kids were scared, so I gave them hugs,” he said. “Some of my other friends was quieting people down.”
All the students were safe, and a replacement bus driver arrived to complete the route. While the district had not released details about the original bus driver’s condition at this report, officials said they notified parents about the incident and praised the students for their calm and responsible actions.
District leaders specifically commended Kane for his bravery and presence of mind during the emergency.
“I just felt good that I could help,” Kane told local news reporters.
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