”I am devastated … This is a principal’s worst nightmare,” is how the principal of the Dennegeur Primary School in Strandfontein, Cape Town, reacted when asked about an accident that claimed the life of four of his pupils and a bus driver on Thursday.
Shaheed Gaidien said he learnt of the bus accident from a teacher travelling in the second of three buses returning home from an outing to the Table Mountain cableway.
He said 50 pupils and eight parents were in the bus that overturned.
Gaidien said he was on his way to the morgue and various hospitals to ascertain first-hand what the situation was.
He assured parents that the school was doing the best it could to ferry the stranded pupils back home to Mitchells Plain, and would be using the minibus transport of a neighbouring school for that.
A teacher at the school said all the phones were being manned as frantic parents tried to call in.
Earlier, deputy city traffic chief Heathcliff Thomas said the four pupils and the bus driver died when the single-decker vehicle overturned in Kloofnek Road in Cape Town.
Another 25 pupils suffered various injuries.
He said the bus was travelling towards the city centre when it apparently clipped the sidewalk down the steep Kloofnek Road at about 2pm.
Part of Kloofnek Road near Quarry Hill remained closed by 3.30pm as the accident scene was secured.
Metro emergency doctor Cleeve Robertson, said four grade-seven pupils, all aged 12 to 13 years, were in a serious condition.
He said the jaws of life were used to extricate some of the pupils, and a helicopter to evacuate some to hospital.
”Where children are injured, it is very emotive,” he said, adding that three doctors and several paramedics were at the scene. — Sapa