Firefighters in bus crash begin ‘rescue mode’ seconds after

International Falls Fire Chief Jerry Jensen was on the bus, which was on its way to the Minneosta Capitol for fighfighters’ lobbying day in St. Paul, before icy roads Feb. 21 caused it to skid out of control. He told The Journal, “we were lucky to have the people on board that we did to deal with the accident.”

“It wasn’t life-threatening, but it was serious. It seemed like we were spinning out forever, in very slow motion. But it all actually happened very fast,” Jensen recalled. “After the bus came to a stop, we came into a different mode. We evaluated to determine how many people were injured, and which injuries had the highest priority. We all went into rescue mode.”

The four International Falls passengers in addition to Jensen were assistant fire chief Van Pavleck, fire captain Eric Norstad and fire engineer Bruce Bergstrom, all of whom survived with no injuries. Seven passengers were injured, the worst with a compound fracture in which the bone in his left arm protruded from his skin. Those seven, ranging in age from 19 to 83, were transported to the hospital with “minor injuries.” Many of those injured were seated in the back of the bus, and most were students attending Lake Superior Technical College to become firefighters. Other firefighters on board, many of whom are also licensed emergency medical technicians for ambulances, worked in departments from across northern Minnesota. Jensen is a volunteer EMT for the Falls ambulance service.

The crash happened as the bus was traveling south on I-35 between the Mahtowa and Barnum exits, south of Duluth. The bus attempted to move into the left lane to pass a vehicle when the icy road caused it to skid back and forth across the freeway, with light snow falling that morning. As the bus fishtailed and picked up momentum from the kick, the rear wheels caught onto the left ditch in the median of the freeway, but didn’t come to a stop. As it began losing momentum, the bus continued forward through the ditch, until the left side of the bus hit a patch of woods, knocking out all except one window on that side.

“When it hit the woods, there was a big jolt,” Norstad said.

As glass spewed inside of the bus, passengers recall hanging on to seats, seat bases, railings or whatever they could find, fearing the bus would roll on to its side, pulling passengers out of the windows and dragging them along until the bus came to a halt, or possibly crushing them. But the trees on its side kept the bus from falling over, Jensen said.

“We were very fortunate. If it didn’t hit the trees the way it did, it would have flipped,” he said. “We went into the ditch sideways, and the trees on the side kicked the bus back so it wasn’t spinning out anymore.”

Norstad told The Journal it felt as though the bus “skidded forever.” Later, he and Jensen said, they found out it takes 11,000 pounds of force for an accident to cause a seat to break off. One of the seats in the back came off its base, where student firefighters sat.

“It just shows the amount of force the bus was under,” Norstad said. “Under the circumstances, I think we were all — every one of us — lucky to get out the way we did.”

On the other side

Seconds after the crash, Jensen and his team “sized it up to see what kind of injuries we had,” he said. The fire chief from Grand Rapids, also on the bus, called 911 to get ambulances rolling, and gave an estimate of how many needed to be transported to a hospital, Jensen said.

“All of us were just covered in glass on the inside of the bus, and there was quite a bit of blood,” he said. “You could see people starting to go into shock, their faces got real pale.”

Using only the first aid kit on the bus with no EMT equipment, Jensen said he and the Falls staff began taking care of those injured. The Falls fire staff were the least physically impacted because they were seated in the center of the bus, so they “stood up, and quickly took control of the scene,” Norstad said.

“Being on the other side of it was kind of weird, but being on a bus full of firefighters, you know how to handle the situation,” he said. “We just did what we’ve been trained to do, and we’re very well-trained for an incident like this.”

Standing in the rubble of the wreck, their attention focused to the back of the bus, where they had heard cries.

“When we were spinning out, it was real quiet on the bus. There was no screaming or hollering,” Jensen recalls. “But halfway through the spin out, when we hit the trees, we heard crying and screaming from the back of the bus, as injuries happened.”

Since the rear of the bus hit the trees first, those sitting in the back absorbed most of the impact, Jensen explained.

Norstad added that the back of the bus was more crowded, so there wasn’t much room to hang on and after the impact into the woods, “we could hear student in lots of pain — there was commotion back there.”

“In taking care of those injured, no one was too panicked,” Norstad recalled. “Except the students who had never seen or dealt with a trauma like this before, they were pretty traumatized.”

Jensen, although he is used to responding to traumatic accident scenes, had never been in an accident himself, he said.

“I’ve been in a little fender bender, but never in a real critical accident before,” he said. “You’re in fear of what’s going to happen when you are in a vehicle that spins out of control.”

Jensen and Norstad added that although the accident happened quickly, there was time to think about how to hang on to minimize injuries from the impact.

“Everybody reached for seat belts, but there weren’t any,” Norstad said. “I got to the floor and grabbed the base of the seat.”

A law mandating buses to be equipped with seat belts went into effect in 2010, but was not retroactive, Jensen said, so any buses manufactured before 2010 still do not have seat belts.

“We would have liked to have seat belts on this bus. As strong as you think you are in holding your weight, we all know we wouldn’t have been able to hold on had the bus tipped over or rolled,” he said. “If you’re in a vehicle that goes out of control that way, you’re like a God dang marble in a tin can — there’s nothing you’d be able to do to stop yourself from being thrown around.”

Although those not injured were still shaken up by the experience, Jensen said that did not get in the way of providing emergency aid to those injured.

“I’ve been taught in my career the rescue part real well,” he said. “It went smoothly.”

The team “calmly” did their job, Jensen said, until ambulances, squad cars and a rescue truck arrived at the scene about 10 to 15 minutes later. In the meantime, some firefighters from the bus handled traffic on the highway as cars slowed down or stopped. Jensen said that “prevented worse accidents from happening.”

“When the ambulances got there, the first responders basically handed us the medical equipment and we finished the job,” Jensen said. “It was a very good working cooperation. We all took care of each other.”

Moving on

Following the crash, passengers who were not injured rode another bus home — the trauma of the morning made it too difficult to continue to St. Paul, Jensen said.

“You get so traumatized,” Jensen said.

Norstad said the bus ride back triggered some fear.

“A couple times when we were passing a car, stopping or swaying, just feeling that kind of motion brought back memories,” he said.

Jensen said although the experience did not change his perspective on victims in the scene of a crash — he already “always felt these people are severely traumatized” — he learned how a person processes the trauma.

“It really hits you about an hour after the accident,” he said. “You realize how close that was, how out of control it was. I’m just happy it wasn’t worse. I think about how fortunate we were to be walking away instead of being hauled away.”

Norstad said having two children in sports who travel on charter buses to go out of town for games on a regular basis makes him worry now.

“I always used to think, they’re going on a bus, they’ll be fine,” he said “Now, you just never know what could happen. All those kids on there without seat belts going through the same incident — we were only around 20 people, but imagine a bus full of kids.”

Despite the worry, Norstad and Jensen agree they are fortunate the crash wasn’t worse and that the bus happened to be carrying emergency responders.

“I feel really sad for the students who were in the back. They were going for a learning experience and it ended up as a trauma,” Jensen said. “But I’m glad we were there and able to take care of people. We all feel so lucky and fortunate to be alive.”