A Louisiana school bus driver caught fire and removed nine children before the bus caught fire, according to ABC News.
Kia Rusev, 28, was heading to the fifth stop on her route on March 13 when she noticed something was wrong with the bus. report. While driving, she noticed that the bus was starting to lose power.
“The bus started acting weird, it started having convulsions and it started moving really slowly,” Rousseff told “Good Morning America” (GMA).
“I learned motherhood. I had children, so I thought of them as my own,” she added. (Related: GoFundMe raises thousands of dollars for bus driver who ‘accidentally’ drank White Claw while picking up or dropping off child).
Security camera footage showed the incident unfolding. Rusev was seen pulling up to the bus as bystanders ran to the bus, saying there were flames coming out from under the car, ABC reported. Rousseff told GMA that students from kindergarten through eighth grade were quickly gathered and removed from the bus. Shortly after, the bus was engulfed in flames.
“I just had to calm down for the kids because they came running up the street crying. And I had to gather them and make sure they were straight. “I did,” she told GMA.
“We could have lost our lives. That’s what I’ve been thinking about,” she said. “Every time I look at the picture, I think, wow, my seat was the first to catch fire.”
The Community Academy of New Orleans, where Rusev works, called her actions “Courage in Wheels.”
“I was really happy to be a hero to the kids and to myself by pulling them off the bus,” Rusev told GMA.
