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Amanda Butterfield reporting It's been two weeks since hundreds of students in Utah County were stranded on buses and in schools during a terrible snowstorm. Thursday, one of the schools affected met with parents, police and teachers to figure out how they could have handled the situation better.
The principal and teachers at Ridgeline Elementary School in Highland, parents and police had a meeting to figure out how to handle an emergency situation better. Ultimately, they narrowed it down to two things that need to be improved.
Ridgeline Principal Dr. Ken Higgins said, "It was a tough night, tough thing for kids to go through, teachers to go through."
Dr. Higgins is fully aware another crippling storm will probably happen again. That's why a meeting was held to figure out how to better deal with an emergency.
Dr. Higgins said, "It probably should have been a higher priority to get those kids off [the bus], but I don't think anybody though it would be that long."
Eleven-year-old Avery was on the bus for six and a half hours. She says it got a little scary. "A lot of kids were crying and wanted their mom," she said.
Dr. Higgins said, "I feel bad for those kids on the bus. We had one bus 600 yards from school. The radio wouldn't work, and cell phones happened to be in the wrong spot."
There were times when the district didn't even know where the buses or kids were. And 911 was jammed, sending phone calls to dispatchers in Salt Lake City, not Utah County. Another problem was an automatic phone system that started calling parents, telling them to pick their kids up at the school.
"What we should have said is, ‘Don't come until it's safe,' because it wasn't safe until 10 p.m.," Dr. Higgins said.
Some parents, like Avery's dad, never got a call. He said, "I know I never got a phone call the entire night to tell me, for one, my daughter made it on the bus, to where her bus was or to get her back to school."
Things that went right included the way faculty members reassured the students. Dr. Higgins said, "They acted with calm heads, didn't get anyone uptight."
And the community was invaluable, delivering food, pillows and blankets to the stranded students and adults.
The school is hoping to get an interactive Web site to keep parents informed during emergencies. It will also now stock hundreds more sandwiches and water to be better prepared in case this happens again.
