Port Alberni teacher honoured for 'critical role' aiding after Bamfield bus crash
Port Alberni teacher Mike Roberts was asleep when he got the call Sept. 13 that a bus carrying 47 people had crashed on the logging road to Bamfield, B.C.
His school's athletic department has a fleet of buses, and Roberts is the keeper of the keys.
First responders needed his help. Ambulances raced to the most critically injured, but there still dozens of people stuck at the remote crash scene.
"I got a call from the superintendent of B.C. Ambulance here in our area and was asked if I could get a bus out to help get some of the kids back that were, I guess, walking wounded," Roberts told David Lennam, guest host of All Points West.
Two University of Victoria students died that night, when their bus travelling to Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre left the gravel road and rolled down and embankment. Dozens more were injured.
Now, Roberts, athletics director and teacher at Alberni District Secondary School in nearby Port Alberni, has been honoured by B.C. Emergency Health Services for the "critical role" he played on the night of the crash.
He'll never forget what he saw when he arrived.
"It's dark. It's the middle of the night. It's a stormy night. And when you hear things like there's 10 ambulances on-scene …. that is not typical."
'This is not pretend, this is real'
On the hour-and-a-half dirt road drive to the crash site, Roberts thought about how the students, who were just in an accident, were going to feel about getting on another bus.
"You just looked at the kids. Cuts bruises ... they're wet, they're cold, they're muddy, they're in shock. There's kids standing there in socks ... feet with one shoe. Suddenly it hits you as a person that this is not pretend, this is real."
On the way to Port Alberni, as he drove 22 wounded students, he never once exceeded 40 km per hour.
Rogers said anyone would have reacted the way he did that night and helped out.
"It's probably nothing that I'm ever going to forget, let alone the kids that were involved."
