BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — All students are home safe after a multi-vehicle crash involving a bus with Bakersfield students from Horizon Elementary on board Tuesday morning.
The crash happened shortly after 9 a.m. near Madera Road, the Ventura County Fire Department said, adding that fifth grade students were on a field trip to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
The bus involved was one of four buses from horizon elementary heading to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. 33 students were on the bus when it collided with three other vehicles on the 118 freeway.
"He made a Snapchat that they crashed and that's how I found out," fifth grader Stacy Martinez, descibing the message she got from her friend who was on the crashed bus. Martinez was on one of the buses not involved in Tuesday's crash. She says her friend is okay.
"He just said that there was a speeding car or something like that, it crashed behind the bus and they had to trade buses," Martinez said.
Fire officials said there were five injuries as a result of the crash, all being moderate. Four people were transported to the hospital, including three children with minor injuries.
The Ventura County Fire Department responded to the scene, saying the hardest part of dealing with the incident was getting the kids off of the bus.
"We were able to shore up the front of the bus and make it so that it was stable and we put a ladder from the emergency window to the mountainside and we were able to safely escort all the patients out," one fire official told reporters.
The ages of the injured victims were not immediately known. Alejandra Lara is Martinez's mother, she says she learned about the crash while reading the news. She immediately feared the worst.
"I called the school and I told them that I saw the news and that there was a crash that I wasn't aware of. And so they told me to hold and then they told me that she was fine. It wasn't her, she was at the library," Lara said.
23ABC spoke with a few other parents off camera who said they had not seen a notification from the school about the crash. The Greenfield Union School District says all parents of students on the field trip were notified.
"Our staff and our parents were awesome and our students were very well behaved during this crisis. And were very proud of everyone involved," said Ramon Hendrix, the superintendent of the school district.
The students who were transported to the hospital were released Tuesday morning. And everyone on the trip had returned home by about 5p.m.
Lara described the feeling of having her daughter back.
"Relief. Yes, really happy. I just I'm glad that she's fine," she said.
An official cause for the crash has not been given.
