Posted on 03/24/2022 3:51:07 PM PDT by Impala64ssa
Jack DePietro was sitting in homeroom at Nyack High School early on the morning of March 24, 1972, when he heard there had been an accident involving one of the school’s buses. “It took a while for everybody to find out the extent of it,” DePietro recalled.
“The news came kind of slowly at first, just that a bus had crashed.” The tragedy would later claim two more lives and be remembered as the worst ever involving a New York state school bus. The bus was split in two during the 7:55 a.m. crash, with one section dragged more than 1,000 feet down the tracks.
The students who died at the scene were James McGuinness, 17; Richard Macaylo, 18; and Robert Mauterer, 14. Fourteen-year-old Thomas Grosse died three days later, and Stephen Ward, 16, died weeks later. The bus driver, Joseph Larkin, a moonlighting New York City firefighter, had taken an alternate route from Valley Cottage that morning because of sewer repair work. He was also injured. There were no barrier gates or warning lights at the railroad crossing. Classmates who hurried to the scene seeking to learn of their friends’ fates wept as they picked up scattered pages of homework along the tracks. Stunned parents kept vigil at Nyack Hospital as they waited for news of their children.
The Penn Central engineer, Charles Carpenter, said the bus appeared in front of the 83-car train without warning. “What can I do with a heavy freight train behind me?” Carpenter was quoted in The New York Times when asked why it took more than 1,000 feet to stop.
Five students died and 45 were injured when the bus was struck and dragged a quarter mile by the train.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
” “What can I do with a heavy freight train behind me?” Carpenter was quoted in The New York Times when asked why it took more than 1,000 feet to stop.”
Only 1000 feet? That’s insanely fast for a freight train to get stopped at almost any traveling speed.
Wikipedia says the train was only going 25 mph and had 83 cars. The momentum is unstoppable in time for a crossing grade.
“The freight train ripped through the school bus, severing it into two sections, with the front half coming to rest a quarter mile down the tracks. The rear section of the bus was torn loose, and fell off next to the tracks upside down with a number of students still inside, while several other students were ejected from the remaining portion of the bus, passing through separated floor sections and fell between the rails into the path of the train.”
Reading that it seems like a miracle that only 7 of the 48 kids onboard perished.
“The news came kind of slowly at first, just that a bus had crashed.”
—
1972 was still in the era when getting news wasn’t almost-instant and people had some time to process stories as they unfolded.
It was better that way, to my thinking, for people who did not have friends/relatives involved in a tragedy.
I agree. And it was also good that every tragedy and horror didn’t go nationwide too. People today get the impression that some things are so common they are almost scared to leave home sometimes when those things are actually fairly rare.
Indeed. I believe there are a lot of things that would have been purely local stories that seem as if they are common now only because of internet fast-communications.
I mean, growing up we rarely heard of children who were declared “missing” after an hour (when they could just be off to the store with an Aunt) - sometimes even if it happened in the same city.
Even then it was on the 6pm or 10pm news, not your phone giving off an alarm about someone missing in the next state.
There were always cross-dressers , too. Sometimes they’d be out and about.
But nobody thought it was some kind of a large “community”. Just a few poor guys who liked to wear a dress and pretend they were women. Or women who liked to dress butch. But nothing common at all.
Moral of the story: virtue and caution and circumspection save lives. The bus driver failed to notice a huge train outside his window. I can see trains 100 yards away while driving. Innocent lives were lost due to vice, recklessness and a failure to scan the road at all times while driving. Some train engineers are emotionally crippled when involved in a crash. Devastating.
There was another school bus/train disaster in Fox River Grove, Illinois on October 25, 1995. 7 high school students died in that incident.
I remember a bunch of kids from my school dying in a school bus crash. I wrote my one and only local newspaper letter about the need for bus seatbelts, although I didn’t use them consistently.
Aragon, Georgia.
7 killed, 74 injured when maintenance train backs into school bus of elementary children.
I remember it very clearly, as one of the kids killed was the son of a close friend.
Supposedly resulted in a settlement from Blue Bird buses (I think, but not sure.) over construction of so-called escape windows and the strength of children to open them.
The bus was rated at 66 passengers, but Georgia law at that time allowed a twenty percent overage.
That law was later changed.
Even the weather is treated that way, now.
Another article on the anniversary: https://patch.com/new-york/nyack/remembering-rockland-county-bus-crash-1972
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