A New Orleans school bus driver said his motherly instincts kicked in when he noticed smoke coming from the vehicle last week and guided nine children to safety before the vehicle burst into flames. Ta.
“As soon as I saw the bus smoking, my instinct was to get them off the bus.” Kia Rusev, 28, told Fox 8. A horrifying incident occurred Wednesday morning in the Central City neighborhood.
“A little girl came and said it was burning under the bus. We got her off,” the driver said.
“I turned off the bus and got off. When I got off, the bus exploded. All I heard was ‘BOOM!’ boom! boom! ‘I was like, “Oh my god, the bus exploded.” ”
Rusev said she was thinking of her children when she took the courageous and life-saving step, which led to her employer, Community Academy of New Orleans, He called this the “courage to ride the wheel.”
Rusev was about to reach the fifth stop on the route, which includes students from kindergarten through eighth grade, when the potentially fatal incident occurred.
After getting the children far enough away from the bus, he returned to double check that no one else was inside.
“I was also upset, but I had to stay calm and not cry because the kids were crying,” she said.
Days after the explosion, a sheen of oil could be seen where the bus had been, and the streets remained scorched.
Rusev, who has been driving a school bus for three years, said he believes a faulty alternator caused the fire.
“It’s very satisfying to be able to save other children’s lives and save my own,” she said.
The Community Academy said it conducted additional inspections of its entire fleet following the incident.
