In the aftermath of the accident involving three band buses from Andrews ISD, Superintendent Bobby Azam said the outpouring of support has been incredible, but at the same time, the district is realizing things will never go back to the way they were before.
The Texas Department of Public Safety and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating. The summary from the NTSB website said the accident occurred about 4:02 p.m. Nov. 19 in the eastbound lanes of Interstate 20 near Big Spring.
A Ford F-350 traveling the wrong way (westbound) in the eastbound lanes near mile marker 179 struck a 2005 MCI motorcoach nearly head-on, the summary said.
Nathan Paul Haile, 59, of Midland, the driver of the F-350, was killed and the pickup truck was destroyed by a post crash fire.
The 2005 motorcoach was the lead vehicle in a caravan of three buses owned and operated by Andrews Independent School District. The motorcoach was transporting 25 high school student band members and three adults, including the driver, to a high school football game in Sweetwater.
The motorcoach driver, Marc Boswell, 69, and band director, Darin Johns, 53, were killed. Karen Johns, Darin Johns’ wife, and 13 students sustained injuries and were transported to local hospitals.
Eleven students were uninjured. A second motorcoach was struck by the F-350 with minor damage. The third motorcoach in the caravan was not involved in the crash.
In the crash vicinity, I-20 consisted of two travel lanes in both the east and westbound directions, separated by a median, the summary said.
Azam said the wreck happened just before Thanksgiving break and the district had counselors come in, but other districts also provided support. There have been benefits, a show of support from area bands and ongoing fund drives for the band.
Students were able to come in if they felt like they needed to over that weekend and through the holiday. There were some that took advantage, Azam said.
“… We had hotlines available. We knew, though, that through the break that Friday was going to be the first funeral for the driver. And then the following Monday was the band director’s funeral. … We were building to those two days, because we knew those days were going to be tough. …,” he said.
The next Tuesday was also difficult because it was the first day back to school after the wreck.
“We’ve got over 1,200 kids in the high school and not every kid was intimately affected by this, but a lot of them were …,” Azam said.
Students, especially those in band, were able to meet with counselors and support staff in the auditorium instead of going to class.
Lubbock ISD offered up a crisis team and therapy dogs, which worked out well.
“… I got to watch it and I’ll tell you it was phenomenal,” Azam said.
He said students who were reluctant to open up could talk to the dogs with the counselors listening in.
“… The counselors were trained to, when they saw the kids interact with a dog, to ask the questions at the right time …,” Azam said.
“They’ve offered that service again. We probably will take them up on it in the future. …,” he added.
From that point, they have taken things day by day.
“… We’ll never really get back to normal. It’s really never going to be normal. You can’t fill those shoes,” Azam said. “You can’t take the place of the men who died.”
Azam said the students are resilient and they’ve been through a lot over the past couple of years with COVID, Snowvid and the wreck.
“… They’ve had a run of pretty major events. But I guess, really, (the) kids are in a good spot. They’re in good spirits. … We’re having to take some things slow. Some kids are not really ready to go back into the band hall. Some kids are. You’ve got two dynamics. You’ve got, I call them the rip the Band-Aid off kids. They’re the ones that just let’s go, jump right back in the middle of it right now. You’ve got others that aren’t really ready. It’s been really great, the outpouring of support. …”
“I’ve said it all along: This is West Texas. This is what we do out here. That’s how people are. …,” he added.
In a Dec. 7 interview, he noted that people they didn’t even know helped out at the accident scene. And while the accident was horrific and tragic, it has brought people together.
“There were two ladies and I don’t know who they are. I’ll never forget their faces. But there were two ladies that showed up that were from Monahans. They were traveling to their game. They got Monahans Lobo shirts. They’re helping to calm our kids … I can’t keep up with everybody who has contributed to helping; countless phone calls and emails have been incredible. …,” Azam said.
He said the students that were injured are faring well and Karen Johns, a teacher at Underwood, is recovering.
Asked if the district is considering handling travel differently as a result of the wreck, Azam said there hasn’t been much they’ve thought of to change except letting everyone know who is on each bus.
He added that district personnel did a really good job and had all the emergency contacts.
“You know, if the wreck had happened, let’s say on the Big Spring Highway where it’s just two lanes and you’re passing we might go alright, no more travel on those roads. Or if the bus had been coming back at two in the morning, we could say no more late night (travel). With this, this was 4 in the afternoon, 4:30 in the afternoon. We’re on an interstate highway. We’re not expecting a wrong-way driver. There probably will (be) something that we think of … but … we’ve traveled since then. We’ve had kids go to things and we try to allow for plenty of time and we made sure that our drivers are not over-driven. … But we were already doing those things, so honestly, there’s really not much else that we can think of from this that we’re like, ‘Oh, we can never do that again.’ It just was such a freak … thing.”
He said they had been on State Highway 176 before getting on I-20.
“… You go over it and that’s where actually my vehicle caught up to bus number three. So then you’re on the access road for … not very far at all and you get on the interstate. …,” Azam said.
Investigators checked with hotels and trucking companies that have dash cameras, among other places, he said.
“I think they’ve checked everything. I think they were able to find out all the details of the accident. We do know … that there were a couple of 911 calls reporting the guy driving the wrong way, which tells you that people saw it. I don’t know how long, how far he was driving the wrong way …,” Azam said.
Some of the instruments in the first bus were destroyed, but those on the other two were fine.
“… You’d have a horn that the case would look like it had been run over by a tractor and the horn was fine. Then you’d have another case — this is what’s fascinating about … accidents —another case would be all locked up and perfect and the horn is beat to smithereens. It makes no sense,” Azam said.
The district has been working with N-Tune Music and Sound on the rented instruments. Those who had their own personal instruments will have them replaced by the district or insurance.
“Of course, some of the instruments that are ours we’ll replace. Insurance will help, but if they don’t we’ve had lots of generous donations of people wanting to help. …,” he said.
All the clothing that was left on the buses was gathered up.
“All the leather jackets, we took those to the dry cleaners for them. It’s kind of a little thing, but … it’s the least we could do,” Azam said.
He added that it’s by the grace of God that the bus didn’t flip over or roll.
“Because had that happened, it would have been just catastrophically worse,” Azam said.
The band has 150 members and about 120 march and pretty much all of them went on that trip. Azam said there were about 30 students on the first bus.
He said they have racked their brains trying to figure out what else they can do.
“You can’t not travel. You’ve got to travel to do things. But at the same time, you don’t want to go through that again so you kind of just try to figure out how do you do it safely,” Azam said.
“You would think the interstate is a safer road than just two lanes. That was a tough call. And I can’t imagine, probably the only thing worse than coming up on a bus would be coming up on your own family. But our people that showed up, that helped, did a great job,” he said.
With social media everything travels so fast that they were getting messages asking whether the news about the wreck was true while they were still sorting things out at the scene, Azam said.
“… In defense of them, they didn’t realize we were on the scene. They didn’t realize we pulled up to it so they might have thought we were at home or already at the game or something. Hey, is this true?”
Asked whether the district is looking at a new band director, Azam said that question is difficult.
“… Our assistant directors … have stepped in. They’re doing a fantastic job of keeping things going,” he added.
