SC bus driver helped students safely escape burning bus

Teresa Stroble thought the commotion coming from the back of her school bus Tuesday morning was energetic students acting up.

It wasn’t until she saw smoke that she realized it was something far more dangerous.

“My students are only allowed to speak with their inside voices, they’re not allowed to stand or make a commotion or anything. I heard a commotion and looked in the mirror and saw students in the back standing,” she said. “I said, ‘What are y’all doing?’ My first thought was a fight. One of the freshmen said, ‘Mrs. Stroble, the bus is on fire.’”

The 1995 bus caught fire as Stroble and 56 students were en route to Duncan Elementary School shortly after 7 a.m.

Stroble, who’s also a teacher assistant at Duncan Elementary, pulled the bus into a nearby parking lot. There, she successfully got students off the burning bus in less than a minute.

“As they were exiting, I could see smoke,” she said. “I just kept saying, ‘Get off, get off, get off.’”

Shortly after the students were outside, Stroble lined them up and wrote down each name to make sure everyone was accounted for. She said by then the smoke was becoming thicker and darker as the flames spread.

As the fire intensified, Stroble and the students moved further away. She said she deliberately avoided looking at the bus so she didn’t think about what could’ve happened to her and the students.

“I think some of the other buses ended up more traumatized because where we were, we couldn’t see the flames. We didn’t see the bus go up,” she said.

Stroble reported the incident to District 5 Superintendent Scott Turner and Transportation Director Ryan Cothran.

Until Tuesday, Stroble had never had to evacuate a bus for an emergency.

She said her practice of having students get off the bus in an orderly manner helped with the evacuation process. Older students in the back of the bus calmly helped Stroble get elementary school students off the bus quickly.

“Had the bus not been quiet, we may have had a different outcome,” she said.

Later that afternoon, Stroble rode another school bus with her students to keep them calm and act as a counselor.

By Wednesday morning, Stroble was back behind the wheel of another school bus taking those same students to Duncan Elementary and Byrnes Freshman Academy.

“I felt they needed to see me,” she said. “Basically, I felt fine the next day. When I woke up, my headache was gone. I said, ‘Let’s go back to work.’”

This story was originally published May 11, 2017 at 7:15 PM with the headline "SC bus driver helped students safely escape burning bus."