More students report feeling sick on second Rowan Co. school bus

ROWAN COUNTY, N.C. (WBTV) - For the second time in two days, students on a Rowan-Salisbury Schools bus were treated by Rowan Emergency Services after they reported feeling sick.

On Monday afternoon at around 4 p.m., a bus making a stop at Miller’s Ferry Fire Department on Long Ferry Road reported that several students were complaining of feeling sick.

The students were taken inside the fire department as two ambulances arrived.

“Apparently there is something that’s making people get sick,” said mother Heather Newby. “It’s making kids have to go to the hospital. This is the second time it’s happened.”

This is not the same bus that was on the route on Friday when the bus driver and eight students were taken to the hospital and later released after getting sick.

Related: School system says no final determination on how bus driver, eight students got sick on bus Friday

“The kids that we took off the bus, they were placed in a classroom inside the fire department,” said Allen Cress, chief of Rowan Emergency Services. “The kids that were feeling sick were took to a different area of the building and they were evaluated by paramedics. Their CO readings were not normal, but they weren’t considerably high.”

While the school said it can’t confirm the cause of this, a spokesperson said there was zero reading of carbon monoxide on both buses.

School Board Chairman Dean Hunter said the district is testing to try and discover what caused the problems Friday and Monday.

“I’m actually going to the school when I leave here so that they are actually testing the buses before students get on, of course the bus yesterday was a different bus than last Friday, I think that’s important for everybody to understand and so there will be a staff member actually on the bus today, riding the bus route. My understanding is there’s going to be some initial testing even before the bus leaves today…being proactive as well as reactive in the evaluation process,” he said.

The school system added in an email Monday to the parents of students on the bus that they are working with experts to find out the issue and will have a staff member ride the route with students Tuesday.

A statement released on Tuesday outlined what the school system was doing:

On Friday, March 24, bus 372 was used to transport students from their homes to Hanford Dole Elementary in the morning with no issue. we are looking at all potential causes both before students boarded the bus to leave Hanford Dole and while on the bus while en route.

RSS has done an initial evaluation of the emission system on bus 372 (Friday’s bus) and bus 315 (Monday’s bus), and no issues were found with either bus. Both bus 315 and the additional substitute bus that was brought to the site to continue the route yesterday were tested by Miller’s Ferry Fire Department while at their site and no issues were found. We will conduct a 30-day inspection as a precautionary measure.

Additional evaluation will be conducted on both buses. We will conduct additional idle testing and testing while running the bus route.

We are working with county safety officials to evaluate any potential exposures at the school site prior to the bus departing the school. This afternoon, we will have a RSS staff member riding on the 372 bus route to monitor all indicators for potential causes.

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