American Notes TEXAS

At 7:40 a.m. last Thursday, the yellow school bus was bound for schools in Mission, Texas. Approaching at a crossroads was a soft-drink delivery truck. The truck and bus suddenly collided, and the bus veered into a gravel pit filled with water 20 ft. deep.

Passing driver Mike Herrera quickly jumped into the pit and helped three students out of the bus. Al Nye, who was driving his own children to school, also plunged in, pulling seven bodies from the water. Nye, a scuba diver, said efforts to help the children were hampered by water so opaque that it was impossible to see. Trapped children struggled to get out the front door, windows and one rear-end exit door. "I didn't expect to be alive, but I'm alive," said one. Twenty youngsters died and 63 people were injured, including the two drivers, in the worst school-bus accident in Texas history.