School Buses Answer Calls for Help in Crises
Houston school officials finally got the word from the Louisiana governor’s office at dusk on a humid Saturday evening: Start the buses. We need you.
Five days after Hurricane Katrina had laid waste to New Orleans, a convoy of 142 air-conditioned school buses from the 209,000-student Texas district rumbled to life. Loaded with food and bottled water, staffed by 350 school employees, and accompanied by bus-repair trucks and a phalanx of school police cars, the yellow buses traveled all night to reach the Crescent City, some 350 miles away.
Over the next 36 hours, the school buses and drivers had the vital responsibility of moving New Orleans residents to shelters, taking hospital patients to the airport for further evacuation, and transporting U.S. Coast Guard and Army personnel throughout...
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