DESOTO COUNTY, Miss. — A group of school buses went up in flames in DeSoto County on Wednesday.
The flames broke out just before noon in a bus parking lot outside Lake Cormorant Middle School.
By the time firefighters from the town of Walls got there, four buses were on fire, and a fifth was catching.
Firefighters put out the flames in about 15 minutes. They saved most of that fifth bus and most of the engine on a bus next to it, but the other buses were destroyed.
“The wind was the biggest factor. The wind was blowing it from bus to bus to bus,” Walls fire chief Mike Hancock said. “It makes it hard to get in front of it and cut if off.”
It took a lot of water to handle the blaze.
“Well, a gallon milk jug, we were throwing about 250 of them a minute at it worth of water,” Chief Hancock said.
Thankfully, no one was hurt, and firefighters said the COVID-19 pandemic actually made it easier for them to put out the fire.
“Not having school in session was a real big help,” Hancock said. “Let’s say it had been a half day, and kids would have been being picked up from school. That would have been a big mess because it would have been harder to get the trucks in, harder to do our lay outs and everything that we needed to do.”
Investigators are still trying to determine the cause, but at this point they believe there may have been a mechanical issue while one of the buses was being worked on.
DeSoto County Schools believes it was an accident. The school district said the buses are insured.
District officials have not said how or if this loss of buses will impact the next school year.
