On Monday, a College Park, Maryland bus driver saved 20 students from Glenarden Woods Elementary School from their burning school bus. The fire started around 4:45 p.m. at one of the rear tires.
The driver, Reneita Smith, safely got all of the students off of the bus and was somehow able to keep calm throughout the whole incident.
Fazul Kabir, a bystander from College Park, posted:
“A big THANK YOU to our school bus driver Reneita Smith who just saved 20 elementary school kids from a bus fire that completely destroyed the bus. Reneita [not only] took each one of the 20 kids from the bus one by one, but also went into the empty bus again to check if everyone was out, while it was still burning.”
No one on the bus was injured, and parents came to get their children at the scene.
Smith told a bystander:
“It’s my job to save them. I am a mom of two kids.”
Smith said that they were driving when a warning on the dashboard started beeping. She pulled over and then saw the smoke coming up from the back of the bus. She used the mic to call for help, and then:
“I put the mic back down, undid my seatbelt, jumped up, got my babies and got off. Once we got off, neighbors kicked right into ‘Mommy mode,’ as I call it, and helped the kids get to a safe haven. When that was going on, I ran back onto the bus to make sure there was no children on the bus. … By the time I got to the last step on the bus, it just went up in smoke.”
This lady is very brave, and she saved 20 lives this week.
Here is a video taken during the incident from a dashboard camera in the firetruck:
Featured image via YouTube screenshot.
