Beaufort-Jasper ACE bus fire raises concerns about bus safety
A fire in a school bus outside the Beaufort-Jasper Academy for Career Excellence Tuesday has raised concerns with at least one parent about the safety of the county's bus fleet.
The parent, who asked to remain anonymous, said she was shocked to receive a text message from her daughter that a bus had caught fire in the school parking lot around 2 p.m. Tuesday. Her daughter's class was moved to another building at the school, which was placed on modified lockdown until the fire was put out, she said.
The bus, owned by the S.C. Department of Education and operated by the Beaufort County School District, was nearly 20 years old. The driver of the bus noticed the engine smoking before the flames grew, district spokesman Jim Foster said.
No students were on the bus at the time of the fire and no one was hurt in the incident, Foster said, but the fire still concerned the parent. She said the fire started shortly before her daughter and other students at ACE would be shuttled back to their feeder schools. The issue that led to the fire, be it electrical or mechanical, could be a sign that the buses aren't properly maintained, she said.
Multiple attempts to reach the Department of Education for comment Thursday were unsuccessful.
No information about the cause of the fire was available Thursday.
The bus was towed from the ACE lot to a regional bus maintenance facility operated by the Department of Education.
The school district has 202 buses -- 147 from the Department of Education and 55 from Durham Bus Services -- in its fleet, including activity buses that transport the school's sports teams. Of those, 156 are used in daily bus routes to and from schools around Beaufort County, Foster said.
In total, those buses travel a collective 15,000 miles a day transporting their charges to school. The amount of miles put on each bus daily varies, changing based on the school's location and route length. For example, a bus transporting students to the Whale Branch schools would travel much further than a bus transporting students to Beaufort Elementary School, Foster said.
Durham's fleet of buses in Beaufort County is much newer than their state counterparts, with an average age of about four years, Foster said.
Despite Tuesday's fire, Foster said school buses are the safest way to get students to school, statistically much safer than traveling to school in a car. The buses are strongly constructed and built to withstand accidents and the passage of time--built "like Army tanks," he said.
Foster said there is more risk to students while they walk to a bus stop or wait for the bus to arrive.
Tuesday's fire was the first on a Beaufort County school bus since Sept. 2013, when a bus carrying the Beaufort High School volleyball team back to Beaufort from a match in Summerville caught fire outside Ravenel. Prior to the 2013 fire, the next most recent fire on a bus locally was in April 2008, when a bus carrying Bluffton Elementary School students caught fire.
Accidents are a more common occurrence among school buses, although they typically result in less damage, Foster said. The bus's strong exterior and its higher clearance off the ground usually causes the force of a vehicle's impact underneath the bus, he said.
Two accidents, one involving students, have occurred this year:
Most common among buses, especially the older state ones, are engine breakdowns.
Foster said bus breakdowns are common occurrences; no count for the number of breakdowns this year was available.
"It's just something that happens," he said. "It's a routine part of a bus system that carries 11,000 passengers each year."
The concerned parent said her son was on one such bus, which stopped in motion and broke down on S.C. 170 on their way home from McCracken Middle School during the first week of school this year. She was never notified of the bus fire or the breakdown, she said Thursday.
Foster said no notification was given for the fire, since no students were on the bus at the time. The district contacts parents for breakdowns and accidents where students are on the buses, but parents have to sign up for the notification at the school, he said.
Foster said it is up to the state to decide when to remove buses from service.
Follow reporter Matt McNab at twitter.com/IPBG_Matt.
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This story was originally published September 3, 2015 at 6:33 PM with the headline "Beaufort-Jasper ACE bus fire raises concerns about bus safety."