Amid the storm that is hitting a large part of the country and keeping the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires on edge, a story moved thousands of people: a school bus with 37 children and four teachers was stranded for more than fifteen hours on Route 9, surrounded by water. The experience, marked by uncertainty and waiting, was recounted by Marina, one of the teachers, in an interview with the TN channel.
“We are in the middle of the water, we can't see the road. We can't go backward, we can't go forward”, described the teacher while they were still trapped near Campana, heading toward Buenos Aires.
The bus, from the company Colprim, was returning from a study trip in Rosario and had departed on Friday at six in the evening. At that time, it wasn't raining. However, during the journey, the storm caught up with them, causing the road to overflow and completely submerging the route.
The lack of warnings was one of the most criticized points by parents and teachers. “Neither in Rosario nor at the toll did they warn us about what was happening. If someone had warned us, we would never have risked the kids”, said Diego, father of one of the students.
Isolated among the water, with no possibility of moving forward or backward, the teachers tried to remain calm and take care of the children. “We are very alert. Fortunately, the water didn't enter the bus. We managed to move about 200 meters to position ourselves in a higher place”, detailed Marina, who is part of the AUCAM school team in Lanús. “The kids are well taken care of, watching movies, eating cookies, alfajores, and they have water”, she explained, also highlighting that they had a functioning bathroom.
Despite efforts to maintain calm inside the bus, the distress intensified due to the difficulty in obtaining assistance. During the night, the teachers contacted the Gendarmerie, Firefighters, 911, and Civil Defense, but the response was constant: they couldn't reach the location. “They tell us there's no way to access. Everyone is stranded”, explained the teacher. Around the bus, a long line of immobilized vehicles completed a desolate landscape.
