By Marcus Garner and Yolanda Rodriguez
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Copyright 2008 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CHEROKEE COUNTY, Ga. — Twenty-seven students were taken to area hospitals Monday morning when a school bus overturned in Cherokee County after hitting two utility poles, authorities said.
The crash occurred about 8 a.m. on Hickory Flat Highway in the southern part of the county. The bus was going north to Sequoyah High School and Dean Rusk Middle School when the driver apparently lost control while negotiating a curve.
“At this point, it’s a little early to determine why the bus driver lost control of the bus,” said Georgia State Patrol Capt. Joe Hamby.
One student was airlifted to Atlanta Medical Center, and another 26 students had been taken by ambulance to two area hospitals, said Tim Cavender, spokesman for Cherokee County Fire and Emergency Services.
None of the injuries is believed to be life-threatening, Sgt. Jay Baker of the Cherokee sheriff’s office said. The Cherokee school system said about half the students only needed medical assessment as a precaution.
“The worst injury is being called moderate, because that child lost consciousness,” Baker said. He said that student regained consciousness before being flown to the medical center.
“We’ve got a lot of scrapes and bruises and bumps, but it doesn’t appear that anything’s too severe,” Baker said.
Aside from the airlifted student, 13 were taken to Northside Hospital-Cherokee and 13 went to North Fulton Regional Hospital, according to the Cherokee school system. The bus driver was also taken to Northside-Cherokee, Cavender said.
The bus crashed about two miles from the schools, which are next to each other. The bus came to a rest several yards off the road on its left side, and the front end was heavily damaged.
Hamby, of the State Patrol, said preliminary information indicated the bus went onto the right shoulder of the road as it came out of a fairly sharp curve, then overcorrected and went back across the roadway where it clipped one utility pole and knocked down another before turning over. Investigations by both law enforcement agencies and the school system are continuing.
Hamby said that there was a surveillance camera on the bus that shoots the students and that they’ll review the footage to see if it sheds any light on the accident. The speed limit at the site is 45 mph.
Andrew Collins, 12, a student at Dean Rusk Middle, was sitting in the front of the bus on the right. His sister, Ashley Collins, 17, a Sequoyah student, in the back on the left.
The two students said the bus had been swerving throughout the 12 to 15 minutes they were on board before the wreck.
Andrew Collins said he was dozing but thought the bus was going over potholes.
“I guess the swerving got worse because some people were like — 'Oh, dude, what the heck,’ ” Ashley Collins said. “All of a sudden, I felt plunging and sliding. And everybody is going everywhere . . . The kid behind me was screaming. Once we got off the bus, we realized some people were really injured.”
Neither child was severely injured. But both were shaken up. Ashley Collins said her jaw and back were bruised, and she had drops of blood on her jeans.
The blood belonged to one of her friends, who goes to Crossroads, an alternative high school. She thinks he went to Fulton hospital.
“I was sleeping and, then, when (the driver) started going off I thought we were on Little Road because it has potholes and everything,” Andrew Collins said. “Then, I started feeling it and, then, I look up at him.”
“I just started freaking out,” he said. “I just heard everything wreck. I was up in the air. And, then, it was over.”
Andrew got out through the roof emergency exit, while his sister got out the back. The Collins siblings were interviewed at Northside Hospital-Cherokee.
Chaz Trettel, a seventh-grader at Dean Rusk Middle, also was taken to Northside-Cherokee but had only a bruise on his ankle.
He said he was sitting behind the driver and that the ride “was a little shaky. I don’t why.”
“I thought he’d straighten out. But, apparently, he flew off the road.”
“If that pole wasn’t there, we probably would have crashed into the trees,” Trettel said. “That would not have been fun.”
Susan Kline went to the hospital to see her son, Christopher, a 13-year-old Dean Rusk student. She said her son had glass fragments in the hood of his sweathirt and was shaken up. Otherwise, he was OK.
Her son had called her to tell her about the accident.
“It was not the kind of call you want to get on a Monday morning or any morning,” she said.
“I know a lot of the children on the bus,” Kline said. “It’s from my neighborhood. I started calling whatever parents I could think of, letting them know what was going on.”
“You think the time you have to worry is when they get on and when they get off,” she said. “I want to know what was going on on that bus.”
Some parents went to the school complex to get information even if they didn’t have a child on the bus.
“I heard about it . . . and I just started bawling. I tried to call up to the school and I couldn’t get anyone to tell me anything, so I just ran up here,” said Trina Clark, of Canton, whose son Christopher is a 9th grader but was not on the bus. Still, she was visibly shaken, with tears in her eyes.
“I feel a lot better knowing he’s OK but I’m sure there are a lot of parents who aren’t OK right now.”
Most parents whose children were on the bus were notified by phone by school officials, said Sequoyah High principal Elliott Berman.
Jerry Cox, a guidance counselor, stood outside the school with a list of all the kids on bus No. 427. Cox said if parents did not get a call, “I think your kids are OK.” Classes at Sequoyah continued Monday.
Phone lines at the school were jammed temporarily because so many calls were coming in.
‘We’re all very concerned and will do anything we can for the families,” said Monica Rohan, Sequoyah High PTA president. We’re still taken aback by it.”
“I know the school system and county acted as quickly as possible,” she said. " A good portion of the kids have already been released. "
For a time after the wreck, Hickory Flat Highway was closed in both directions between Park Creek Drive and Poole Drive.
Lisa Childers, who works at Family Tradition restaurant within sight of the wreck, said the breakfast crowd was beginning to arrive when it happened.
“We heard a really loud noise and traffic came to a stop. So we came to the conclusion there was a wreck,” she said.
“And then everybody started arriving and they blocked traffic in both directions.”
Childers said the highway there is relatively flat and straight.
The highway is very busy, carrying commuters who have moved to new exurban subdivisions in the last decade. Cherokee County has been one of the fastest growing counties, by percentage of population, in metro Atlanta.
Staff writers Mike Morris, Ken Sugiura, Diane R. Stepp, and Christopher Quinn contributed to this report.