Paulding County Firefighters and EMTs the eight fire departments and six EMS agencies took part in a day long School Bus Safety and Extrication class, Saturday April 24th. The class was held at the Paulding County Training Facility, in Paulding, Ohio. The __ firefighters and EMTs participated in the knowledge of school bus construction, safety features and ways to extricate victims from a school bus once involved in an accident.
Every year, over 550,000 school bus vehicles are on the road each day, traveling nearly 22 million miles each day. School Buses are the leading means of transporting of individual on the road each day. There are close to 21,000 bus accidents each year and unfortunately, 55 fatalities occur, with 10 of those being occupants on the school buses, each year.
In 2019, the world saw the Archbold School Bus Accident, caught on surveillance camera, when the school bus was stopped, to drop off two elementary school children. The video shows the bus getting hit from the rear by an east bound semi-tractor trailer. Fortunately, there were only minor injuries to the bus driver and semi driver. It could have been a far different story had the bus been full of students. Back in the spring of 2012, a Hicksville Exempted Village School Bus was involved in a two vehicle accident at the intersection of St. Rt. 11 & 49. In that accident seven members of the Hicksville Baseball team were taken to the hospital as well as the driver and six passengers in the van that struck the bus.
