Children Left Stranded for Hours After School Bus Breaks Down on Trip

Dozens of children from El Shaddai Seventh-day Adventist Primary School in Belmopan were left stranded along the highway yesterday evening after the bus transporting them from a field trip reportedly broke down.  The mechanical failure forced the students to wait on the roadside for several hours before alternative transportation could be arranged.  Love News understands that the children, who ranged from infant one to standard one students, were returning from an educational trip to the Belize Spice Farm and other destinations in the Toledo District. One parent says the breakdown left dozens of students waiting near the highway into the night.  One concerned mother, who requested anonymity, says her fifteen-year-old son was among the students on the trip and later described the ordeal to her.  The parent says she became alarmed after learning that the children had been waiting for an extended period of time on the side of the highway after dark.

Mother: “He sent me some videos about how the children are playing, they’re eating, some of them are crying saying that they’re hungry and he said especially when it got dark that is when the children started get distressed or aggressive, crying, hungry, scared. He said and the bus reached them eight o’clock, the other bus that had come to pick them up and then they were there long. When he did reach Belmopan it was already after ten. The children went on an education trip and when coming back from the place that’s when the bus broke down. He said nowhere where people were to help, to assist or things like that and the children were on the roadside sitting down, some of them played games and when the phone battery or tablet or thing went dead that is when the children started to panic.”

Love News spoke with the principal for El Shaddai Seventh-day Adventist Primary School, Esmay Correa, who provided the school’s account of the incident. She says the students were grouped in two buses.  She was on the first bus that was miles ahead of the second bus when it experienced mechanical failure near Indian Creek Village.

Esmay Correra, Principal, El Shaddai Seventh Day Adventist Primary School: ”Our bus could not go back because we were quite ahead and of course you know we could not take everybody in one bus. Later we understood that the bus owner was supposed to get another bus from Dangriga I believe but the bus did not come for the children or I believe that the bus owner wasn’t able to communicate with the person he was trying to. We understood that the driver was trying his best as well to do what he could do. Unfortunately time was running. We were told to wait a little while which we did but at the same time trying to contact people to see who could help us. Our last resort, one of the teachers contacted the National Bus Company. I want to emphasize that it was not the National Bus Company as shared in the media that broke down on us, it was somebody else. But we managed to contact the National Bus Company and they offered us a reasonable price. At the end of the day school had to cover the expense for the bus to bring the children. Yes it came late but when we first contacted them they told us in the next fifteen minutes the bus would be there. That fifteen minutes took longer than what we really expected.’”

Love News understands that several hours later, alternative transportation was eventually secured, and all students were safely returned home.