Oct. 13, 2001, started like any other competition Saturday for the Seward High marching band. Students arrived at the school, grabbed uniforms and instruments, loaded the buses and vans and left for Omaha Burke High School.
After performing, the band reloaded the buses and set off for home, taking Highway 6 west from Burke. Students relaxed, talked to friends, listened to the Nebraska football game or tried to sleep.
About 2 p.m., everything went wrong.
According to interview transcripts from National Transportation Safety Board investigators, passengers on the first bus in the convoy heard “a crashing, banging, crushing sound,” according to one, and felt the bus hit the rumble strips on the side of the road.
After that, some described sensations of falling or of weightlessness before the bus landed in Papillion Creek.
The area on Highway 6 over the bridge was under construction, and traffic narrowed to two lanes which included a shift to the left and then right in the westbound lane.
According to the NTSB report, the Seward bus moved to its right to avoid another school bus traveling east. It “passed through the remains of the three-rail barrier, rode up onto the bridge’s sidewall, and rolled 270 degrees clockwise as it fell about 49 feet,” the report said.
“It was kind of a roller-coaster-like kind of feeling, like when you’re going down the big steep hill,” student Chris Policky told investigators.
“While we were in the air, everything stopped. And band hats were floating around,” Jacob Barker, another student, said in his interview.
The bus landed on its side in the creek.
“It was an eerie silence, because the bus wasn’t on any more, the bus was completely silent,” Ryan Tremblay, another student, said.
Three people died in the crash – students Ian Koehler and Ben Prescott and parent Tracey Kohlmeier. A third student, Eric Bader, died of his injuries a week later.
Uninjured and less injured students helped their bandmates out of the bus and onto the bank. The more seriously injured were transported to Omaha-area hospitals. The rest of the band and buses were taken to Elkhorn High School where parents could meet their kids.
Then-superintendent Dr. Marshall Adams said the bus driver, Josh Smith, had driven for SPS for two years and was one of six Concordia students who drove for the district. The bus was a 2000 Thomas Built Bus that could carry 78 passengers.
On the trip from Burke, it carried 27 students and three parents.
Lawsuits were filed on behalf of several students following the crash. Settlements totaled $3.07 million.
The NTSB investigation, which released its final report in 2004, concluded that the driver’s unfamiliarity with the bus may have contributed to the accident and that the driver’s behavior was consistent with anticipating a front-end collision.
In addition, the report said, “the roadway geometry in the work zone created a visual phenomenon that caused the accident bus driver to preceive the oncoming Norfolk bus as impinging upon its lane, regardless of whether it did or not.”
The combination of the lane shift in the westbound lane and the curve on the bridge presented “a complicated visual situation” that could lead to misjudged distances and clearances.
“The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the failure of the Nebraska Department of Roads to recognize and correct the hazardous condition in the work zone created by the irregular geometry of the roadway, the narrow lane widths and the speed limit,” the report said.
An upcoming edition of the Seward County Independent will include interviews with survivors of the crash.
