By Sarah Volpenhein
Grand Forks Herald
LARIMORE, N.D.— Richard and Susan Lunski walked out their front door to the sound of children screaming in pain.
“The train was coming. We hear a whistle blow, and then we hear a boom,” said Richard Lunski, at his home in a subdivision just outside Larimore on 36th Street Tuesday.
The Lunskis were among the first people at the crash site within 100 yards of their home, where a BNSF train and a school bus collided Monday afternoon, throwing several passengers from the bus and claiming the lives of the 62-year-old driver Max Danner and 17-year-old Cassidy Sandstrom, a senior at Larimore High School.
Richard Lunski told the Herald Tuesday morning the image of injured children lying scattered across the site, their backpacks and other belongings strewn about, was still burned into his eyelids.
Twelve other students were aboard the bus, five of them boys ranging in age from 6 to 16 and seven of them girls ranging in age from 5 to 14. North Dakota Highway Patrol has not released the names of those students.
Four of them were still at Altru Hospital as of 4 p.m. Tuesday, according to a release from Altru. Three had been discharged, and three more had been transferred to other facilities in the region. Grand Forks County Sheriff Bob Rost said one of those three was transferred to Sanford Health in Fargo and another to a medical facility in Minneapolis. He did not know where the third had been transferred.
The school bus had just dropped off a few children in the Lunskis’ subdivision, including their granddaughter, when it started north on 36th Street toward County Road 4 at about 3:40 p.m. Monday. Danner failed to yield to a stop sign at the train tracks and went into the path of the westbound train, according to the Highway Patrol.
Stop signs were installed at the crossing in the fall of 2009, said Amy McBeth, spokeswoman for BNSF Railway, the same year that Darvin Friederich, 63, was killed by a freight train at the same railroad crossing.
Lt. Troy Hischer, of the Highway Patrol, told the Herald that based on his investigation, he believes Danner slammed on the brakes upon noticing the stop sign or the train, but was too late.
Hischer said the front tires of the bus were on the train tracks when the train collided with the right side of the bus by the folding doors, causing the bus to spin counterclockwise 360 degrees and throw several passengers from the bus.
The bus came to rest with its back end in a grove of trees south of the train tracks, its front end smashed in and facing the tracks.
Investigators do not believe any medical condition of Danner’s was a factor in the crash, Hischer said.
“Our thoughts right now are he failed to provide a safe stopping distance,” he said. “We don’t believe there was any kind of medical condition that impaired his driving at this point in the investigation.”
In shock
Upon seeing the students scattered about not 100 yards from his home, Richard Lunski said he did what “anyone else would do” and rushed toward them, many of whom were covered in blood and suffering from injuries.
“The biggest thing was trying to calm the kids down,” he said. “One girl, all she would say was, ‘Did anybody die?’”
Others, he said, had glazed-over eyes.
“They were shaking and going into shock,” Richard said.
The Lunskis carried the ones they could to their car and wrapped them in blankets, holding them close.
At one point, Richard noticed hands peeking out from beneath the engine compartment of the bus and realized a girl was wedged underneath it, kicking her legs.
He dragged her out from underneath the engine compartment, her body covered in diesel fuel, he said.
“I can’t get the smell out,” Susan Lunski said through tears Tuesday morning.
She said, “It seemed like forever” before help arrived.
Seven ambulances arrived on the scene and had the injured children en route to Altru Hospital within 15 minutes of the time of the emergency call, Grand Forks County Sheriff Bob Rost told the County Commission at a meeting Tuesday. Ambulances responded to the scene from Grand Forks, Larimore and Northwood.
But the injured were cut off from ambulance support until the train cars, which were blocking the way onto 36th Street, were decoupled, Richard said.
“It was hard to get help because the train was in the way,” he said. “EMTs were throwing bags over with neck braces, Band-Aids.”
Before the train was decoupled, medical personnel climbed over the train’s flat beds - the train was not carrying any cargo - to reach the injured children, Richard said
The first sheriff’s deputy to arrive on scene was also “traumatized” by what he saw, said Rost at the County Commission meeting Tuesday.
“He could hear kids moaning and groaning and had to crawl across the train to get over to the scene,” Rost said of the deputy, whom he would not identify.
Ongoing investigation
The investigation into the collision should last another two weeks, Hischer said.
The school bus was removed from the crash site Monday night and was being inspected for mechanical deficiencies Tuesday. Hischer said inspectors checked the brakes and tires and found nothing out of the ordinary. The school bus, which is about five years old, was in good working order before the crash, he said.
The speed of the train is not a factor in the crash either, he added.
The speed limit for trains at that intersection is 60 mph, McBeth, of BNSF Railway, said in an email.
The Highway Patrol also sent the school bus’ black box - a recording device used to track a bus’ speed, whether the brakes were engaged, and more - to an outside facility to download the information. Hischer said the state Highway Patrol does not have the equipment needed to download the information logged in the black box.
He would not say where they sent it.
The Highway Patrol is also in the process of conducting interviews with the children aboard the bus at the time of the collision. Hischer said patrol officers are interviewing the least injured students first.
“We want to give them some time to heal,” he said.
The Grand Forks County coroner is also performing an autopsy on Danner to see if he had a medical complication at the time of the crash.
But Hischer does not expect the autopsy will refute his thinking that nothing medical interfered with Danner’s driving.
“It’s just making sure we’re thorough,” he said.
Our Savior’s Lutheran Church across the street from Larimore High School held a private prayer service at 6 p.m. Tuesday. The media was not permitted to attend.
The funeral for Danner will take place next Monday in St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Honeyford, N.D., according to the Amundson Funeral Home website.
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©2015 the Grand Forks Herald (Grand Forks, N.D.)