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Surprise snow causes school bus accidents
Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by JACQUELINE RABE
Willie
Flanigan, 55, throws salt on his driveway off of Leonardtown Road Tuesday while Malik Williams, 6, enjoys playing in the snow nearby.
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Everyone saw it coming, but they didn't think it would be this bad.
When a snowstorm swept into Southern Maryland early Tuesday morning, most officials believed the weather reports that the storm would produce a light dusting that wouldn't stick to roads.
However, the storm shifted south, coating the roads with a slick layer of wet snow, which caused motorists to slip and slide, left school bus drivers unable to navigate hills and caused approximately 74 accidents throughout the county in a three-hour period, from 7 to 10 a.m.
The frigid temperatures the area experienced for the past several weeks froze the ground, causing snow to immediately stick to road surfaces. The resulting road conditions caused minor havoc on the county's roads.
The police scanner buzzed with reports of multiple vehicles sliding off icy roads and into ditches. According to Diane Richardson, spokeswoman for the Charles County Sheriff's Office, police responded to at least 95 traffic-related calls between 7 and 10 a.m. Of those calls, 74 were accidents and 21 were stranded motorists. Those numbers held through early afternoon, with no other incidents reported, according to Richardson.
By 9:25 a.m. Tuesday, police and volunteer fire and rescue workers had been called to the scene of incidents involving at least six school buses in traffic accidents or unable to get to the top of hills.
According to Richardson, as of 2 p.m. there were eight reported accidents involving school buses. Of these eight, five buses were occupied by children. Richardson said there were no injuries reported from the accidents.
Some parents said they were angry that school officials decided to open schools at the regular time even though a snowstorm was predicted by the National Weather Service.
Emergency medical technician Pam Williams, the mother of three students in Charles County public schools, said the system was irresponsible to open schools as normal on Tuesday.
"They should have had a two-hour delay to see what would happen," Williams said. "They knew this was coming, and they should have waited to see how bad it was going to be."
Williams said she has two daughters who attend Henry E. Lackey High School and another at Indian Head Elementary School. She was most concerned about her high school daughters. She said one of them is a new driver, which especially concerned her in the poor weather.
"The road was clear when they left, but [school officials] knew the storm was coming; now she has to drive home in this mess," Williams said.
Schools spokeswoman Shelly Buter said the system made the decision to open the schools by 5 a.m. At the time, she said, the roads were dry and weather reports indicated that the storm would move north of the county.
"We didn't anticipate getting all this precipitation on the roads," Buter said.
At 8 a.m., as buses were already en route to the schools, school officials met again, reviewed weather reports and realized that the storm's path had shifted, Buter said.
At 8:57 a.m., the school system posted a message on its Web site stating that schools were closing early.
La Plata resident Bill Burgess, a local attorney, has three children who attend Piccowaxen Middle School in Newburg and two who are students at Walter J. Mitchell Elementary School in La Plata. Burgess said he could not understand why school officials allowed the elementary buses to roll when clearly the weather conditions were treacherous.
"When I put my middle school kids on the bus at 7 a.m. it was starting to ice," he said. "By the time that my kid got on the elementary school bus at 8:15 the weather was seriously deteriorating. The secondary roads were completely covered. The problem is that there is evidently nothing in place for somebody in the school system to make a decision. There was ample opportunity to prevent the elementary kids from going forward."
The two-hour early dismissal for Tuesday afternoon made no sense, Burgess said.
"They're making a bad decision worse; why not postpone opening school for two hours?" he said. "This is just outrageous. They had all the time in the world to stop the elementary school kids from boarding the buses. There's just no excuse for it."
Bill Proper, director of the Charles County Department of Public Facilities, said he had 15 county trucks and 15 contractors staged and ready to hit the roads before the snow began to fall, but added that the suddenness of the storm caught them by surprise.
"The fact that it came so quick was a surprise," he said, adding that road conditions around 10:30 a.m. were still poor. About 100 trucks were scheduled to be clearing the roads by early afternoon, he said.
"We've got everything out there that we can throw at it," he said.
A storm that might leave a little less than an inch of ice that the NWS predicted for last night had Proper a little worried.
"We'll remain on standby," he said.
"We'll be out there salting the roads. Once it turns to rain tomorrow this will only be a memory."
Proper said that the biggest problem on the roads when snow suddenly starts to fall and stick is motorists who do not slow their speed down to match the treacherous icy conditions.
Staff writer Gretchen Phillips contributed to this report.
