Roland Park Elementary Students Evacuate Smoking Bus on I-83

A yellow school bus carrying 36 third-grade students from Roland Park Elementary School was forced to pull over on northbound I-83 Wednesday morning after smoke began billowing out the back of the vehicle, said a parent who helped chaperone the group’s field trip.

A volunteer firefighter who happened to be driving behind the bus on the interstate, just south of Belfast Road, pulled over and called rescue personnel as teachers and parents ushered the students onto the shoulder of the road—all in a single file line.

“Basically everyone did exactly what they needed to do to make it as safe as it could possibly be,” said Meg Stephenson, whose older son Jack was on the bus. “The rescue personnel were there right away, the teachers did a great job and the kids did a great job.”

The students were participating in a two-bus field trip to Springfield Farm on Yeoho Road in Monkton as part of a program teaching them about food. The first bus made it to the farm safely just as the second bus experienced problems while ascending the incline before the Belfast Road exit.

No one was injured in the incident and Baltimore County Fire Department officials said the smoke was caused by a broken oil line. Earlier there was confusion between county fire officials, who said the students were from Roland Park Elementary School, and city school officials, who were unaware of the incident.

Ironically, the parents and teachers had been joking with the driver about what happens when a bus breaks down, Stephenson said. Not long after, the bus began to sound as if it was struggling to get up the hill when the driver pulled into the shoulder.

“When we first pulled over, the smoke billowed up and came in the windows,” Stephenson said. “It smelled like burning rubber.”

The students became slightly alarmed, she said, but “we told them, ‘Listen, it’s just like a fire drill. Listen to instruction and form a single file line.' They all did it.”

Once on the shoulder, the students all sat on the guard rail and waited for the other bus to drop off the first group of students. Northbound traffic was blocked shortly before the far-left lane was opened. The other bus was allowed to make a U-turn on I-83 to pick up the students and take them to the farm.

The whole ordeal lasted about a half hour, Stephenson said.

Before the students were picked up, however, every tractor-trailer that slowly rolled by in the one open lane blew its horn to fulfill the students’ arm-pumping requests.