A New Bloomfield School District bus slid off a county road after school Monday when it was making its drops.
Trooper Andrew Armstrong of the Missouri State Highway Patrol said the bus driver and 11 students were aboard when the bus slid off onto the soft shoulder of County Road 432 and struck a ditch. He said there were no injuries from the accident that occurred at 4:05 p.m. The bus was lying sideways in the ditch when responders arrived. The Highway Patrol, New Bloomfield Fire Protection District, the Callaway County Sheriff's Department and the Callaway County Ambulance District all responded to the call. New Bloomfield Elementary Principal Julie Gerloff arrived on the scene to check on the welfare of the students. She said she was glad everyone was safe.
"We were very impressed with the response we got from the Callaway County services," Gerloff said.
Interim Superintendent Thomas Baugh said Armstrong told him the bus driver got over onto the side of the road when another vehicle approached and the soft shoulder sucked the bus right into the ditch. He said the weather has made the county roads difficult for the drivers.
"These county roads are really soft and the mud is really deep," Baugh said. "It's going to be a rough spring until these roads settle down and solid up."
"It seems we have had a lot of school bus accidents in this area lately," said School Board President Leroy Wade. "We do everything we can think of to try to prevent school bus accidents, but when weather conditions are not ideal, it seems they sometimes are unavoidable."
Baugh said the 11 children on the bus were all elementary students, and they were either driven home by parents who came and picked them up or were transported home by another bus that arrived at the scene.