‘He held that wee fella’s hand and wouldn’t leave him’
SCREAMING children with ‘bloodied faces’ have left a harrowing impression with the man who helped them escape a toppled school bus.
Portaferry man Gary Smyth has been hailed a hero after coming to the aid of children trapped in an overturned school bus on Monday afternoon.
The bus was carrying 43 school children, as well as the driver, from Strangford Integrated College to Bangor, when it crashed at 3.50pm on the Ballyblack Road East, Newtownards.
Mr Smyth, a 46 year-old plasterer, had been travelling in the opposite direction with colleagues when they witnessed the vehicle go over the side of a verge, landing on its side in a field.
Together they made their way to the scene and as they approached the bus they began to hear the screams of the trapped school children.
Unable to break the glass on the back window of the bus to free the children, Mr Smyth sent his son to get a hammer from his van, allowing him to break the glass and create a route for the pupils to escape.
Describing the scene, he recalled: “At first I didn’t hear the children until I moved closer. Then I heard them screaming and when I looked in through the window at the back, through the shattered glass, I could see their faces crying and they were screaming for help and that’s when we said to stand back and we busted through it.
“They were all very good. When we asked them to stand in a line and come out one by one, they did. They did everything they were told. They were brilliant.”
While Mr Smyth and others on scene helped free almost all of the pupils from the bus, two children were trapped on the bottom deck of the bus and required the help of emergency services to be freed.
“There was a wee boy we couldn’t get as his arm was trapped and a wee girl who had her leg trapped,” Mr Smyth said, explaining that he was wary of pulling the children free in case they ‘bled out’.
He described how the frightened young schoolboy, who was trapped on the bus, clutched the hand of the bus driver, not wanting to be left alone, along with the schoolgirl who cried while waiting to be freed.
“The bus driver was in shock and we had to take him away,” Mr Smyth said.
“He was holding his [the schoolboy’s] hand. He was absolutely brilliant. But he was traumatised.
“He was shaking, he was pure white, his lips turned blue and he didn’t look good. He held that wee fella’s hand and wouldn’t leave him until we had to take him away.
“We had to look after him too. The wee fella was ok. He was safe.”
Mr Smyth and others on site also held the hand of the young boy, ensuring he wasn’t left alone, while waiting to be freed from the toppled bus.
The emergency services arrived within 10 minutes of the incident and began clearing the site and freeing the trapped children, so Mr Smyth and others left to make room in the area.
“It would have broken your heart seeing their bloodied faces, cut eyes and cut ears. Every pupil had been cut. There wasn’t one who came out without blood on them,” he said.
Mr Smyth praised those who got out of their cars to console the children and help speak with their parents on the phone at the scene, believing they were a major help in calming them down.
The father-of-four continued that he was shocked that there had been no fatalities as a consequence of the crash and struggled to sleep that night.
“By that stage I was ready to go home, I didn’t want to see too much more because everyone was safe,” he said.
“You didn’t know what you were going to walk into and I didn’t think about that until my wife said to me later on that evening. She said I could have walked in and there could have been limbs, bodies or anything lying in there. When I thought about that it did keep me up for a bit to be honest.”
He added: “It was a miracle that everyone survived. There was not one fatality, with just minor injuries.”
