KELSEYVILLE — Two children and two adults made it out of an American Type A school bus crash with minor injuries on Highway 29 near Smith Ranch Road Tuesday afternoon.
Roughly 50 feet away from where the bus laid on its right side off the right shoulder of Highway 29, police officers and medical responders spoke to the two children, both of them boys, and told them how tough they were after the crash as they tried to keep them calm.
Bus driver Martin Hernandez, who was traveling north on Highway 29 just before 3 p.m., said he got distracted briefly and drove the bus off the right side of the rode into a roughly 7-foot-drop.
“I took my eyes off the road for a second and paid the price,” Hernandez said as he walked back and forth at the scene of the crash, still visibly shaken.
The bus was reportedly coming from a school in Lower Lake.
The windshield of the bus nearly hit a tree, but the crash did not seem to have caused major damage to the bus.
Hernandez said the first thing he remembers after the crash was people climbing into the bus and helping the two children out.
The two children sustained minor injuries and were taken to the hospital on an ambulance as a precaution, California Highway Patrol (CHP) Officer Mike Humble said.
Hernandez did not report having any injuries at the scene. The name of the second adult traveling in the bus at the time of the crash was not confirmed by CHP.
Hernandez said that in his roughly 30-year-long career he had never been in a crash.
Mechanical malfunction was not suspected, nor discarded as a cause of the crash, Humble said, but an inspection on the bus” mechanical condition will be performed.
Isaac Brambila is an associate editor for Lake County Publishing. Reach him at 263-5636 ext. 37 or at ibrambila@record-bee.com.
