Oceanside firefighters rescue woman, hit, pinned under school bus

Oceanside firefighters on Monday used air bags to rescue a woman struck and pinned under a school bus as she pushed a toddler in a stroller, a fire department official said.

The child apparently escaped injury but the 45-year-old woman was in serious condition at Nassau University Medical Center after the bus hit her shortly before 3 p.m. on Long Beach Road just south of Davidson Avenue, said Oceanside fire's Chief of Department Charles Daskalakis. The injured woman, a nanny, had become stuck under the bus. Daskalakis did not release the victim's identity.

Oceanside school district spokeswoman Donna Kraus said the bus was operated by First Student Bus Company, one of six companies the district contracts with. The bus was on its way to pick up students at the time of the crash, Kraus said.

The driver, 71, was not charged, police said. No children were on the bus at the time of the crash, Daskalakis said.  No one could be reached at First Student’s dispatch office late Monday.

Daskalakis said he reached the scene at 2:46 p.m. to find “a Northwell ambulance, a lot of police and a smaller school bus with a person’s legs sticking out from behind the driver’s side tire.” 

“I couldn’t tell if she was pinned under the chassis, or if driving off was going to cause any further injuries, so units were advised we were going to need air bags to lift the bus up off the person.”

Firefighters used chocks to stabilize the vehicle, laid the air bags and inflated them, he said. Police said she suffered leg injuries and a heads laceration.

“The patient was put onto a backboard, slid out from under” and put onto an ambulance, he said. “Once we got her out, she was lying facedown on the street,” but was “conscious, alert and speaking with us."

Daskalakis said the child, a boy, who appeared to be between 1 and 2 years old, was crying when he was put onto an ambulance, but that was because “he was in there with strangers and his nanny wasn’t with him.” The stroller was undamaged.

The department’s air bags are strong enough “to lift trains off of people, so a school bus — especially a smaller school bus — is not a major task for the equipment,” he said.

“Thank god it is unusual,” Daskalakis said. “We drill and practice for just these incidents. My members were there in a very short amount of time, they secured the vehicle and lifted it off the patient.”

A Nassau police spokesman said the incident “doesn’t look like its criminal, it looks like it was just an auto accident.” 

The rescue was not the department’s only job Monday — at the same time as its volunteers responded to the crash, members of one of its engine companies were in Five Towns assisting on a house fire.

“It is amazing what our members do on their own personal time,” Daskalakis said.