Managing School Bus Incidents
This session is designed to help Prehospital Care Providers including Flight Medics, Nurses, Dispatchers, Firefighters, Fire Chiefs and Emergency Room Staff better understand how to manage School Bus Incidents. Daily in the United States an average of 480,000 yellow school buses, transport approximately 25 million students to and from school.
Although school buses are the most regulated vehicles on the highway, incidents involving school buses occur daily and often create major problems. School Buses are designed safe with roll over and high crush protection. The bus is painted yellow for high visibility and equipped with flashing red & yellow lights; cross view mirrors and red flashing stop signs. Some buses are equipped with video surveillance cameras both on the inside and outside to record incidents, but with all these safety features in place Managing a School Bus Incident is a difficult and challenge for Fire / EMS.
According to the National Safety Council (NSC) the crash data shows that between 2007 – 2021, there has been 1,481 people killed and 294,000 people injured in school bus related crashes. 70% of the deaths in school bus related crashes were occupants of the other vehicles, 17% were pedestrians, 6% school bus passengers, 4% school bus drivers and 3% pedal cyclists.
During this session we will discuss the frequency of Alabama school bus incidents and you will be amazed to learn how often they occur. Using a unique power point presentation, we will also discuss school bus designs, the types of injuries you can expect, how patients are triaged, patient tracking, reunification, school bus crash management and understanding the importance of working together with law enforcement, fire department and school system representatives.
The most important take away will be the importance of having a school bus incident plan and conducting practice drills.
Objectives:
- Participants will understand School Bus Crash Data.
- Participants will learn about safety features and school bus designs.
- Participants will better understand how injuries occur on school buses.
- Participants will learn ways to account for everyone on the bus.
- Participants will review TRIAGE, Transport and Reunification.