Dallas – Edna Briant remembers lying on concrete, praying that her back wasn’t broken, screaming for someone to rescue her 84-year-old sister from the burning bus that carried them and dozens of other nursing-home patients away from the predicted path of Hurricane Rita.
“I said, ‘Get Claire!”‘ said Briant, 87, a deep purple bruise evident on her left arm as she pointed to her sister. The two sat in side-by-side wheelchairs Sunday in a neat Dallas nursing-home room, their calm smiles giving no hint of the harrowing month they had just survived.
The sisters were evacuated from New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. On Friday, they were hustled from Houston amid standstill traffic as Texans fled the coastal region. But before they got to Dallas, the pair survived a fire on a bus that left 23 people dead.
Briant, seated two rows behind the driver, said the group was on the bus for more than 15 hours when the vehicle “made a funny noise.” The bus had already stopped once to fix a blown-out tire, causing “some mumbling and grumbling” among passengers.
When the bus stopped a second time, the driver looked concerned, she said.
“All of a sudden, he got out of the chair and he pushed my legs over and he’s looking underneath” to the floor of the bus, she said.
The driver checked outside the vehicle and apparently noticed a problem, perhaps seeing flames or smoke. He briefly conferred with aides and yelled for passengers to get off the bus.
“I said, ‘You know I can’t walk!”‘ Briant said. An aide rescued her by throwing her “on her shoulder or something,” quickly putting her down on the ground and going back for more people.
“I couldn’t move, and I said, ‘Please God, don’t let my back be broken,”‘ she said.
Her sister later joined her on the roadside, along with several others dragged from the burning vehicle, Briant said. A series of explosions, at least some caused by passengers’ oxygen tanks, fueled intense flames, authorities said.
The bus, run by Global Limo of McAllen, Texas, was taken out of service in July after its registration expired. It was allowed back on the road because of a waiver signed last week by Gov. Rick Perry intended to make available as many commercial vehicles as possible for the hurricane evacuation.
Authorities on Sunday said 23 people perished in the fire, down from earlier estimates that 24 passengers died.
Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board arrived over the weekend to begin sifting through the wreckage. NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway said the cause of the accident might not be known for a year or longer.
Johnny Ray Partain, a former Global investor, said he has driven four of the company’s buses and warned a court in May that the vehicles were poorly maintained and dangerous.
Global’s attorney, Mark Cooper of San Antonio, declined to comment on the company’s safety records.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency paid Global Limo $48,000 to evacuate people last month from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Partain said.
