BAND TRIP TURNS INTO NIGHTMARE
Driver killed, dozens injured as bus carrying students from Channelview home from Disney careens off Ala. highway
“We’re blessed because I think our students are going to be all right.” Channelview ISD Superintendent Greg Ollis
Fast asleep on the charter bus, Aliza Delgado woke to noise. The senior French horn player saw her band director in the front of the bus, yelling something.
She and her bandmates from Channelview High School were high above Interstate 10, heading home early Tuesday to Houston after a spring break trip to Disney World.
The band director seemed frantic, but Delgado couldn’t understand what he was saying.
That’s the last thing she knew, she told her dad later, before suddenly the bus was falling, tumbling 50 feet down and crashing hard into an Alabama ravine.
Tuesday morning’s crash killed the bus driver Harry Caligone, 65, and injured dozens of her classmates. Her phone had flown out of the bus, but she borrowed one to call her dad.
“She was crying a storm,” Joe Delgado said, and said her legs, back and shoulder hurt. She was being taken to a hospital in Pensacola, Fla.
He didn’t think twice. He hopped in the car right then and took off for Florida.
The busload of band members was returning home from Orlando about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday when the bus veered off the road and into a 50-foot ravine, coming to a mangled wreck under Interstate 10 near the Alabama-Florida line.
Incredibly, none of the 40 students or six chaperones on the bus was killed, and none was in critical condition by midday Tuesday.
News of the band trip-turnednightmare ricocheted across Channelview, through Texas and around the country, sending rumors swirling on social me-
dia, families booking emergency flights and people across the South offering their help to a band of high school kids they’d never met.
Injured passengers were taken to 10 hospitals, but 20 of them landed at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola, Fla., four of them by helicopter.
Hospital President Henry Stovall arrived at work at 6:15 a.m. Tuesday, and the news came five minutes later: A bus full of teenagers had crashed roughly 20 miles away.
Stovall felt the adrenaline rush. The hospital activated a “code green,” triggering preparation for mass casualties — something the hospital drills for regularly. Training then took over, propelling Stovall and others through what would be an unimaginable morning.
Hundreds of people mobilized, Stovall said. Twenty physicians who hadn’t planned to be working arrived to help. Nurses who had worked overnight decided to stay on in case they were needed.
The first four of the injured to arrive were in critical condition, said Trish Stephens, director of emergency services.
“It was blunt trauma... multiple fractures, contusions in the body,” she said. “Some of it was life-threatening and needed to be addressed right away, which we did.”
She lost count of how many physicians were treating the patients.
‘A lot of panic’
By sunrise, Alabama investigators were on the scene trying to figure out what happened.
The bus appeared to have left the roadway at a bridge stretching over the ravine, said Assistant Deputy Chief Anthony Lowery of the Baldwin County Sheriff ’s Office. It lurched over a grassy median before falling the 50 feet and landing at the bottom of the ravine.
A widely circulated video of the scene showed the bus on its side below a long and narrow bridge, looking nearly broken in half.
DeWayne Benson, a 15-yearold sophomore who plays bass clarinet, told his mother, Frances Dodson-Benson, that he woke up to the sound of the bus hitting “some sort of hard bumps,” the Associated Press reported.
“Then there was a loud, really huge crash that was presumably when the bus finally came to a stop,” she said. “There were students on top of students, the bags, it was just disarray, a lot of commotion, a lot of panic.”
No one knows yet exactly why the 65-year-old driver lost control of the bus. Benson said he heard his band director yelling “Harry! Harry!” just before the crash.
Driver ‘always kind’
Houston-based First Class Tours identified Caligone as a longtime driver. Public records show he was a veteran driver whose history included commandeering tour bases at least 20 years for several companies.
He lived in Scenic Woods, a northeast Houston neighborhood, with his wife.
His longtime neighbor, Willia Debose, said Caligone was a reserved, considerate man who remembered her in his travels. She considered him a conscientious driver and was shocked that he lost his life at the wheel.
“He was always kind. Always nice. He was quiet,” she said. “Every time he went on a trip, I always got something. He always brought back something – even if it was a stuffed animal.”
The crash shut down I-10 in both directions. Responders had to rappel down to the bus to rescue people.
It was noon before all passengers were pulled from the scene.
As the medical teams got to work, Channelview band parents raced to get to their children. And Facebook lit up: Peoahead ple in Florida and Alabama offered lodging to Channelview families who needed a place to stay. Others told parents they could go to the hospital and sit with the teens “for comfort, until you can get to them.”
In Pensacola, a J.C. Penney gave the Channelview passengers fresh sets of clothes. A Subway in the building offered sandwiches. A local student band came by with 20 pizzas.
As students were discharged, hospital personnel cleared out a conference room and brought in video games, mattresses, recliners, phone chargers — everything they could think of that the students might want. Sprout the therapy dog stopped by. Interviews were not made available.
“These are very bright young people who just went through something that I hope no one else ever has to endure,” Stovall said.
“They’re processing information well, carrying themselves beautifully.”
By Tuesday afternoon, just five would still be under treatment at Sacred Heart — three in good condition and two in serious condition.
‘It was a thanksgiving’
The bus that crashed was the second of two student buses headed back to Channelview Tuesday morning. The other bus, which passed the bridge of the wreck, kept heading west and arrived at Channelview High early in the afternoon, flanked by police cars with lights flashing. Family members and others had gathered in a back parking lot to meet the bus.
Christopher Shackelford, the priest at St. Andrew Roman Catholic Church in Channelview, was there to help greet the students when they arrived. When the bus pulled in, he said, parents broke into prayer and gave thanks, then held their children for long minutes.
“It was a thanksgiving,” he said, “giving thanks that it wasn’t worse than it was.”
Grief counselors and other local pastors were also on hand to receive the arriving students.
Even kids who seemed unfazed as they got off the bus, Shackelford said, started sobbing when they were wrapped in their parent’s arms.
Tuesday evening, about 75 people gathered for a prayer vigil outside the Bill Neal Center, an athletic facility next to the high school where the band rehearses in the parking lot.
As a spectacular sunset painted the darkening sky, some wiped away tears as a minister spoke. Others huddled together in the evening chill or gathered in quiet circles, their heads bowed.
Bringing everyone home
Channelview Independent School District officials said they are now focused on getting everyone back home safely.
Several students were afraid to ride back to Channelview on the road, Ollis said, so the district is working with airlines to try to find them flights home.
Channelview ISD Superintendent Greg Ollis hopped on a flight to Florida Tuesday afternoon.
“We’re blessed because I think our students are going to be all right and our staff members are going to be all right,” Ollis said before he left. “It’s unbelievable how it turned out after what we saw this morning.”