'The screams and the silence': Survivor recalls fatal bus crash

A large print of a photograph hangs above the sofa in Kathryn Rose's immaculate Arnprior home.

It's Phares dans la Tempete, la Jument by Jean Guichard, the famous aerial image of a lone man standing calmly in the doorframe of a stone lighthouse, surrounded by a violent surge of seawater.

It's the artwork that most powerfully reminds Rose of what it was like in her seat on the upper level of the double-decker bus that slammed into Westboro station on Friday, Jan. 11.

"People were screaming in pain, you could it hear it in their voices, they were just in so much pain," she said.

"And then the silence, the silence from underneath the shelter roof. It's the screams and the silence. They're both so haunting."

More than a week after the crash that killed three people and left 23 others injured, Rose is wondering what forces placed her so close to the danger, but allowed her to walk away.

Picture captures Rose surveying crash site

As she ascended the bus's staircase that afternoon, the idea popped into her head that being near the front on the left-hand side would be perfect.

"I was following people up the stairs and by the time I got there, the seat was still available. I was like 'Sweet, I get to sit here.'"

The ride was unremarkable until she felt a small bump. Then she felt her body take the path of "a wild circle," and she was weightless for a moment.

"That was when I watched the two people in front of me go out the front window," she recalled. "And then it was over."

Terrified, she got up out of her seat, climbed over what was left of the seats in front of her, and looked down onto the road. The condition of one of the ejected passengers looked so grave, Rose assumed she was dead.

She grabbed her phone to call 911, and at that moment, someone took a picture. It was one of the first images to circulate from the scene.

The dispatcher answered with the customary question about which service was needed; police, fire or ambulance.

"Everyone. Send everyone. The bus has been in a horrible accident," Rose told the voice.

Now, with the bruising on her legs nearly gone — not even as bad as some of the bruises she's given herself — Rose feels regret.

"Why was I just bruised? I would have gladly taken some broken bones so that some of them wouldn't be so horrendously injured," she said.

On her way down the stairs and out of the bus, she encountered the bus driver just rising from her seat. Seeing the traumatized look on the driver's face, Rose said she asked the woman if she was OK.

"'Oh my god, I'm so sorry. Oh my god, oh my god,'" Rose recalled the driver replying.

In a daze

She returned to work at the Privy Council Office on Monday, but left after a couple of hours when she realized she couldn't focus, much less help her colleagues.

At home, she lines the coffee maker basket with a fresh filter, fills it with coffee grounds, and returns to the cupboard to look for coffee filters. The smoke alarm announces the grilled cheese sandwich has been forgotten in a frying pan.

"I walk into a room and I don't know why I'm there," she said, adding her doctor told her to take another week off.

She's speaking to friends, to relatives back home in Newfoundland, and to professional counsellors. And she gets so many calls from family she worries her trauma may be having a secondary effect on them.

With no choice but to reflect on what happened, her thoughts have turned to what might have made the crash less deadly.

When she left work on Monday, an articulated bus took her past Westboro station again, where she had a chance to think about its jutting metal awnings.

"A structure to prevent people from being rained on was stronger than the bus that the people were riding on," she said.

"If our bus was reinforced like that shelter was, would this have happened?"