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Hospital makes changes after chaos of Lee High bus crash

By Elizabeth Gentle – bio | email
Posted by Dana Franks - email

HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) - Friday marks the third anniversary of the Lee High School Bus Crash. On Nov. 20, 2006, a bus carrying Lee High students from the school to the tech center plunged 30 feet from Interstate 565. Four students died, while 33 were hurt.

Christine Collier, Crystal McCrary, Nichole Ford, and Tanesha Hill were the students killed in the crash.

The National Transportation Safety Board's report was issued just Thursday, just one day before the third anniversary. It details many aspects of the investigation, including how it happened.

In a computer generated animation of how the crash happened, it is shown how a Toyota Celica pulled alongside the bus. But it didn't make it around the bus. The Celica clipped the front tire, and the bus ended up on the rail of the interstate before crashing to the ground below.

Also detailed in the report was the emergency response time. It took just 48 minutes to get all of the students to the hospital. Medical personnel credited years of training.

A lot of lessons learned from the lee high tragedy. Emergency personnel admit mistakes were made that day, but they've taken what they've learned and turned it into a valuable tool. They are making sure if a tragedy like that happens again, they'll be even better prepared this time.

Huntsville Hospital's emergency room treated 31 passengers on the Lee High bus. Dr. Sherrie Squyres was one of the lead physicians.

"We had a lot of everything that day," Squyres said.

Family members panicked as victims were brought in without identification. Paramedics rushed seriously injured teens through the ER.

"I remember a boy in particular that had a horrible deformity to his arm," Squyres said. "He had been thrown around quite a bit.'

Huntsville Hospital immediately put their disaster plan in place, treating patients and taking care of family.

"That was one of our biggest challenges, trying to get the family to their loved ones to let them know they were okay or didn't survive the accident," said Emergency Preparedness Coordinator Joyce Thomas.

Three years later, Thomas said the hospital took what mistakes were made and tweaked their disaster plan. They spent millions to overhaul and expand the hospital's ER to better handle mass casualties. And she said there is better communication.

"We have incident command now," she said. "We have laptops and computers where the incident commander can see exactly what is going on. We are using our Well Soft packaging so people in the family room can look on the computer, as Well Link names to patients."

There are also dedicated trauma rooms where up to nine critically injured people can been seen in one pod by a doctor.

Also, a parking garage has been designated for mass casualty and the hospital now has an alert notification system in place to let all employees know when disaster strikes.

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