Without her maternal instinct, nine children on a school bus would have perished. Kia Rousseve, a New Orleans school bus driver, claimed she followed her mother instincts when she observed smoke coming from the vehicle. She quickly rescued nine youngsters from the burning bus.
“As soon as I saw the bus smoking, my instinct said, ‘Get them off the bus,'” Rousseve, 28, told Fox 8 of the scary incident in the Central City area on Wednesday morning.
“A little girl came up and told me the bus was on fire underneath. I got them off,” the driver said. “I turned the bus off and got off. When I got off, the bus blew up. All I heard was, ‘Boom! Boom! Boom!’ I was like, ‘Oh, my God, the bus blew up.”
Rousseve explained that her actions were motivated by concerns of her own child. Her brave actions earned her the nickname “Courage on Wheels” from her workplace, Community Academies of New Orleans.
Rousseve was on her regular school bus route, approaching her fifth stop for K-8 pupils, when the dangerous incident occurred. According to the New York Post, after insuring the children’s safety, she fearlessly returned inside the bus to assure there were no more passengers aboard.
“I was shook up, too, but I had to stay calm and not cry, ’cause the kids were crying,” she told me. The aftermath of the explosion was still visible days later, with an oil sheen and charred streets.
Rousseve, a school bus driver with three years of experience, believes a malfunctioning alternator caused the fire.
“I feel great about saving other kids’ lives and saving my life,” she said.
Following the incident, Community Academies performed a thorough assessment of its whole fleet as a precaution.