Warren bus driver feels ill, pulls over and radios for help
7:01 PM Wed, Mar 25, 2009 | Permalink
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WARREN, R.I. -- A bus full of elementary students on their way home this afternoon opened their windows to help their driver breathe after he felt ill, pulled over and radioed for help. Laura Lopes, 10, daughter of Margaret and Peter Lopes of Warren and a fifth-grader at Hugh Cole Elementary, was sitting behind the driver, one seat back. "He was fine one minute," she said, "Then the next one, his face got pale, he was sweating and he couldn't breathe well. He said his arms hurt." The bus was heading north on Asylum Road. The driver pulled over before his first stop and before crossing Child St. When she got home, Laura told her mother that the bus was late because the driver had to call for a rescue. "The monitor took off his coat and his yellow vest and put a water bottle on his forehead," Laura Lopes said. "Someone called the ambulance and they came in 5 minutes." "Thank God for monitors," Margaret Lopes said after calling First Student and then The Providence Journal to say what a great job everyone did. "It could have been terrible." "First of all, anything can happen. Having another adult on the bus, when you have that many children on the bus, to keep the children calm," made all the difference, she said. Second, the driver knew he was ill "and didn't say, 'Oh, gosh, I'm all right,' " she said. "If he had just ignored it, and if he had pulled out on Child Street, he could have gone into oncoming traffic" which is usually heavy at that time of day, about 3:15 p.m., Margaret Lopes said. "It could have been a devastating situation," she said. The bus service sent another driver to deliver the children home, and an ambulance was not far behind. Laura Lopes said that her fellow fifth-grader, Makenzie Moniz, also 10, was first to open a window, and then the other children opened theirs. "They just told us to be quiet, and we did," with some of the older students helping keep the kindergartners and first graders calm. "Some of them were all scared," she said. Laura Lopes said the driver is "like in his 60s" and his first name is Don. He took over a few weeks ago when their usual driver moved to Tennessee. "He's new and the kids love him," Margaret Lopes said. "I hope he's well." A woman answering the phone at First Student confirmed that a bus driver had pulled over and asked for a rescue, but said she could not comment further without permission from a supervisor who could not be reached. 
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