A Harrowing Class Trip When a Chartered Bus Overturns on the Boom Road
Twenty persons, including eight students, as well as parents and teachers were injured and had to be rushed to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital this morning after the passenger bus they were travelling in overturned in a ditch along the Boom/Hattieville Road. The educational trip gone wrong has left many more in shock and triggered the cancellation of several other trips from the Santa Clara RC School in Corozal. News Five’s Duane Moody reports.
Duane Moody, Reporting
Students, parents and teachers from Santa Clara RC School in Corozal are shaken up tonight after the chartered Tillett bus they were travelling in overturned just after six o’clock this morning. The driver became ill and lost control of the bus which rolled over into a ditch on the Boom/Hattieville Circuit near the dumpsite.
Alejandro Cowo
ASP Alejandro Cowo, O.C., C.I.B., Belize City
“This morning at about six-twenty, police responded to a traffic accident on the Boom Road where upon arrival by the dump site area, they observed a Tillett Bus on the right hand side of the road leaning up on one side. They also observed several students suffering from various degrees of injuries.”
It was a frightening experience for the fifty-four passengers on the bus, who set out early this morning for a field trip that would have taken them to Xunantunich in Succotz, Western Dairies in Spanish Lookout and the Belize Zoo at mile twenty-nine on the George Price Highway, before they returned to their homes. Santa Clara resident, Ravina Jetwani was accompanying her brother on the trip. She recounts what happened.
Ravina Jetwani
Ravina Jetwani, Passenger
“Everybody, as I said, some were taking a nap, some were on their phone, some were eating. Since he was going at a normal pace, we didn’t really expect anything to happen by Burrell Boom station. I don’t know if it was a coincidence, but I felt something in me that said something is going to happen. And we just felt like the bus was leaning a bit, but I didn’t expect that we were going to turn over. I hugged my little brother because I was like just in case and when I felt like boom, we just went. The people on the other side fell on top of us. Like the window, some were shattered and some of us were on the floor with dust, soft drinks all over us. We were on mud. The screaming, the crying of the little children and since some of the glasses were broken as well, some of us quickly jumped out.”
Luckily, the Jetwani siblings escaped unhurt and were able to get out shortly after. It wasn’t so fortunate for about twenty-eight others who suffered various degrees of injuries and were taken to the K.H.M.H. for checkups and treatment.
Ravina Jetwani
“Us at the front, not too much. Just sever belly aches, backaches. My head, I got dizzy. The people at the back got injured the most; I think too ladies broke their arms. The boy that was on the engine, he got his foot stuck underneath and it took really long for him to take it out; he was screaming in pain. That’s the only thing I managed to see. It was really shocking. I felt as if I was going to faint. But thank God the majority of us are okay and for the ones that are unwell, I just hope that they get better soon.”
Duane Moody for News Five.
