The following account of the Oct. 13, 2001, school bus accident that killed three students and one parent from Seward is based on the National Transportation Safety Board’s report.
The day dawns cloudy and crisp in Seward. It is Oct. 13, 2001, and at 10 this morning, 22-year-old Joshua Smith arrives at the high school to pick up the 30 passengers he will drive to Omaha.
The marching band is participating in a competition it attends each fall.
At the bus yard, Smith has completed a pre-trip inspection of the relatively new Thomas Built bus — one he has driven three or four times in the two years he has driven for the district. He loads up the 27 band members and three mothers for the 71-mile drive.
The Concordia University student joins a five-vehicle caravan to Omaha, where the band is scheduled to perform at 1 p.m. at Burke High School near 120th and West Dodge Road.
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Band Director Kristopher Morehead has selected a route he believes is the shortest. Smith is unfamiliar with U.S. 6, which has at least a couple of construction zones, but the caravan arrives without incident. Band members unload and perform.
When it’s time to go home, the teenagers and three parents climb aboard Smith’s bus, some of the band members hanging their blue and white uniforms with gold lettering over the windows adjacent to their seats. They stretch out in the 78-passenger bus, most of them taking a whole seat for themselves.
Benjamin Prescott and Ian Koehler, both 14, sit in the front two rows on the left side of the bus. Tracy Kohlmeier, 40, is in the right aisle seat in row three. Eric Bader sits in the last row on the right, by the window.
The caravan pulls out of Burke about 10 minutes before 2 and heads west down U.S. 6 with Smith’s bus in the lead. Traffic is heavy for a Saturday, but the weather is clear and the road is dry.
Ten minutes into the trip, Smith approaches a part of the six-lane road that is under construction. Traffic is being channeled into two lanes, and he can see that the road shifts slightly to the left on the West Papillion Creek Bridge ahead, and then to the right. The only thing separating the narrow lanes is a double yellow stripe, and a convoy of three buses is approaching in the opposite lane.
The first, a motorcoach from Norfolk filled with students on their way to a 4:30 p.m. performance at Burke, passes Smith’s bus. As the Seward bus enters the spot where the lane shifts, Smith meets a 52-passenger motorcoach from Norfolk. Passengers on the Norfolk bus say later the two passed so closely it appeared they could reach out and touch the passing bus.
The two lanes are each 10½ feet wide. One of the buses, with both mirrors, measures 9.8 feet wide, the other 10.1 feet — or 19.9 feet of bus in a 21-foot space. If the buses are each going the posted speed limit of 45 mph, the closing speed between them is 90 mph, or 132 feet per second. There is no room for error.
A witness in a car behind Smith’s bus sees that just before the bus enters the slight left curve before the bridge, its right rear tire leaves the pavement and its front appears to enter the opposite lane before returning to its own.
The driver of the second Norfolk bus sees Smith turn his steering wheel abruptly to the right, a startled look on his face. The rear of the bus begins to rotate clockwise and tilt to the left.
Smith’s bus hits the guardrail on the approach to the bridge; he steers to the left, then abruptly back to the right, striking the guardrail again and then a three-rail barrier between the guardrail and a concrete bridge railing.
The bus goes through the barrier, rides up onto the bridge’s sidewall and all four wheels leave the pavement. It tips to the right, disappears over the railing and rolls 270-degrees clockwise in a 49-foot freefall.
In midair, the students float and tumble, like a wild ride at the fair. For part of a second, they are upside down. Some grab the luggage rack rails above them.
Two seconds after they leave the bridge, the bus crashes on its left side, the front driver’s side corner slamming down on a creek bank, followed by the back of the bus — all 39 feet of it stretched across the 1-foot-deep water.
Bus seats, seat cushions and uniforms are strewn about. Band mates and parents are bloody, some lying in a heap. All are injured, many of them seriously.
Three people in the front of the bus — Benjamin Prescott, Ian Koehler and Tracy Kohlmeier — are dead.
Eric Bader, 17, in the last row window seat on the right side of the bus, is critically injured.
Three die of trauma to the chest and upper back and the right side of the pelvis and head. One drowns in the mud of the creek bed, knocked unconscious and pinned facedown between the left bus wall and a seatback.
Two of the students trapped inside the bus are pinned between seat bottoms and loose seat cushions. Another is ejected from near the back of the bus and trapped between the bus and the creek bed.
The crash has deformed both sidewalls of the bus, shattering glass and mangling metal, punching in the driver’s compartment and the shell around the last three rows. The right sidewall is pushed 8 inches inward between rows 2 and 4 and rows 6 and 9.
The driver suffers fractures to his arm, leg, ribs and pelvis, a punctured lung and injuries to his kidney and spleen.
Other passengers have serious injuries to their hips, ribs, arms and legs, broken bones and head injuries. Still others escape with cuts, scrapes and bruises and headaches.
The first calls to 911 come in at 2:06. At 2:07, the Omaha Fire Department dispatches one engine and one medic company.
At 2:11, a Douglas County Sheriff’s deputy arrives, followed by four others and the fire response. A minute later, a fire department battalion commander arrives.
Most students are still inside the bus when rescuers arrive, some with arms and legs trapped between the inside wall of the bus and their seats. None have had school bus emergency evacuation training because most rode the buses only for selected events.
Some escape through the windshield and side windows. Others kick out the front roof hatch and kick open the rear roof hatch.
A first-aid kit shifted on impact and obstructs the emergency door release handle and instructions. Overhead luggage racks partially block lettering that denotes the three emergency exit windows and emergency exit side door.
Eight people need to be carried off the bus.
More equipment and medical units are called to the scene. Area hospitals are told to prepare for multiple injuries. Rescuers request a medical helicopter from Omaha and asks for response time for four more — two from Omaha, one from Lincoln, one from Norfolk.
Six students are taken by helicopter to an Omaha trauma center 20 miles away.
An hour and a half after the bus goes over the railing, the last surviving patients arrive at three Omaha hospitals.
By Monday, three will still be in critical condition, two in serious condition and seven listed as fair. Fifteen will be treated and released.
Six days later, Eric Bader will die from his injuries.
Reach JoAnne Young at 473-7228 or jyoung@journalstar.com.
The accident's toll
Nearly 30 people were taken to hospitals for medical treatment and three died when a Seward High School bus plunged off a bridge outside of Omaha on Oct. 13, 2001. One student died later of his injuries.
Killed
Ian E. Koehler, 14
Benjamin Prescott, 14
Tracey A. Kohlmeier, 40
Eric Bader, 17, died Oct. 19
Injured
This was the status of students, band parents and driver Joshua Smith two days after the crash.
At Saint Joseph Hospital
Eric Bader, 17, critical
Scott Dinslage, 16, fair
Jeston Koch, 17, fair
Lauren Knox, 17, fair
Adrian Moravec, 15, serious
Luke Rief, 17, fair
Tate Rief, 14, critical
Lindsey Wallman, 15, fair
Dawn Prescott, 40, fair
Joshua Smith, 22, critical
At Immanuel Medical Center
Donna Eiting, 50, fair
At University Hospital
Jennifer Telecky, serious
Released after treatment
Jake Barker, Sarah Dierberger, Chad Eberspacher, Paul Eiting, Sarah Allen, Miranda Judds, Lacy Koch, Christopher Mackie, Kyle Martin, Paul Matulka, Brandon Mueller, Chris Policky, Zach Smetter, Ryan Tremblay, Josh Vandenberg, Patrick Werner
Nebraska school bus crashes
2001:
1 fatal crash
4 bus passenger deaths
17 injury crashes
64 injuries to bus passengers
2002:
116 crashes
2 fatal crashes
2 death, not bus passengers
29 injury crashes
69 injuries, 4 to school bus passengers
2003:
137 crashes
1 fatal crash
1 death, not bus passenger
30 injury crashes
43 injuries, 9 to passengers
2004:
106 crashes
0 fatal crashes
43 injury crashes
