According to Rockland Fire Chief, Dispatched for a reported accident between a loaded school bus and car with heavy damage to the car. Upon arrival it was quickly determined that none of the students or drivers were complaining of any injuries despite moderate front end damage to the car. The bus sustained very minor damage to the right front bumper. Due to the number of students a school official was requested to come to the scene to assist with contacting parents and determining if any students needed medical attention as due to their age they are unable to refuse treatment of transport to the hospital. Under typical conditions if an under aged child is involved in an accident and no guardian is present they must be taken to the Emergency Room by EMS.
Rockland Fire & EMS personnel and RSU 13 officials were able to contact guardians of all but two students and explain the situation and ask if they felt their child needed to be seen in the emergency room. All of the guardians agreed their children were fine to continue on to school. As all of the students were on a school bus the school took responsibility for the two students who were unable to make contact with their parents.
Though this appeared to be a very low speed accident the school bus imparted significant damage to the front need of the car, while sustaining very minor bumper damage. And while the car sustained significant damage to the front end, the seatbelted driver was uninjured. All of the students were very cooperative with fire/EMS and school officials, which shortened the overall time spent on scene.
As usual Rockland Fire & EMS and Rockland PD work well together to quickly mitigate any incident and integrating school officials into the incident command structure was seamless.
No comments:
Post a Comment