Pregnant school bus driver evacuates students seconds before bus bursts into flames
A pregnant Milwaukee school bus driver is being hailed as a hero after she evacuated dozens of children from her bus just seconds before it violently burst into flames.
Driver Imunek Williams was about two hours into her typical Wednesday morning bus route heading towards the Milwaukee Academy of Science with 37 students on board, ranging from kindergarten through high school, WISN reported.
Suddenly, just about a half mile from the school, she said she “started to smell something funny.”
“I just thought it was normal smoke coming from another car, because I always smell smoke or weird smells,” Williams told WISN. “But then as I started to drive more, the smell and the smoke started to get thicker.”
She considered ignoring the issue, with the school only being moments away — but instead made the life-saving decision to pull over.
“I just told the kids, let’s get off,” she said. “I evacuated the bus, made sure everyone was off, and made them line up against a gate. And as soon as we stepped off the bus, I turned around and the bus was just … in flames.”
Video obtained by the outlet shows smoke and flames billowing out of the charred yellow school bus from front to back as firefighters put a water hose through one of the windows.
Milwaukee officials had initially reported that no children were on board at the time of the fire, according to the WISN.
After the fire Williams was taken to a local hospital to check on her and her baby, which is due in August. Both were found to be healthy.
Since the incident, both students and school officials showered Williams with thanks for her quick thinking.
“It just feels good that I was able to get them off and no one was hurt,” she said. “That’s just my biggest concern because if it was my kid on the bus, I would want the bus driver to do the exact same thing.”
The next morning, she was already back on her route picking up the kids.
“They actually weren’t expecting to see me,” Williams told the outlet. “They were like, ‘Oh you’re back? You didn’t get burned up?’ I said ‘No, I’m still here.'”
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, authorities said.
