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The Carrollton, Kentucky, bus collision was one of the deadliest bus disasters in United States history.

Summary

About 11:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday May 14, 1988, Larry Mahoney, a drunk driver in a pickup truck traveling in the wrong direction on an interstate highway in a rural, unincorporated area of Carroll County, Kentucky collided head-on with a gasoline-powered former school bus which was in use as a church bus. The initial crash was exacerbated when the gasoline from the ruptured fuel tank of the bus ignited immediately after impact, which also blocked the front loading door. Difficulties encountered by the victims attempting to evacuate the crowded bus quickly in the smoke and darkness through the only other designated exit, the rear emergency door, resulted in the death of 27 people and injured 34 of 67 passengers. Six passengers escaped without significant injury. Mahoney also sustained injuries.

In the aftermath of the disaster, several family members of victims became active leaders of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), and one became national president of the organization (Karolyn Nunnallee). The standards for both operation and equipment for school buses and similar buses were improved in Kentucky and many other states, notably increased emergency exits, better structural integrity, and less volatile fuel.

Other safety issues remain to be addressed. Flammability of materials used in bus seating must also be factored with cost, durability and performance of the foam in impact situations. Another unresolved issue is the lack of requirements for occupant restraints such as seat belts in larger capacity school buses. Some advocates find it ironic that use of the lap seat belts currently available would have likely reduced the number of the 40 occupants who managed to escape the bus in the short time available during the Carrollton incident.

On Interstate 71, the crash site is marked with a highway sign erected by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC). Even twenty years later, memorial items such as crosses and flower arrangements are placed at the site by families and friends. As of November 2007, the Carrollton crash remains the worst bus crash in U.S. history tied for fatalities with the Prestonsburg bus disaster which occurred 30 years earlier in Floyd County, Kentucky in 1958.

The bus, driver, and Church Day at Kings Island

On May 14, 1988, a youth group consisting of mostly teenagers (most of whom attended Dove Academy) and four adults from First Assembly of God in Radcliff, Kentucky boarded their church activity bus and headed to Kings Island theme park (north of Cincinnati, Ohio, about 170 miles from Radcliff). The group included church members and their invited guests. As everyone arrived early that Saturday morning, those wanting to go on the trip had grown to more than originally anticipated. The church's principal pastor (who stayed behind) restricted the ridership to the legal limit of 66 persons plus the driver.

The school bus

The church bus was a conventional type body-on-chassis school bus model. The 1977 Ford B-700 school bus chassis was equipped with a Superior school bus body, a model with 11 rows of 39 in. (99 cm) wide seats on either side of a central aisle 12 in. (30 cm) wide. The bus was ordered by the Kentucky Department of Schools in 1976, as part of an order of over 600 units for districts throughout the state, including 3 for Meade County.

The chassis was manufactured at Ford's expansive Kentucky Truck Plant located outside Louisville and then was shipped to Lima, Ohio, where the body was installed at Sheller Globe Corporation's Superior Coach Company. It was certified as a school bus with an effective build date of March 23, 1977 , which is when the chassis began production, as required by federal regulations. Both the vehicle, defined as a school bus , and the build date were important legal distinctions. March 23 was just nine days before fuel tank guard frames and greater access to emergency exits and a number of other improved safety standards, notably better clear space access to rear emergency exits, were required by revised federal regulations on all school buses built for use in the U.S. with beginning production dates of the chassis on or after April 1, 1977.

The completed bus was delivered in time for use during the 1977-78 school year, and served ten years. The church acquired the used school bus as surplus from the Meade County, Kentucky School District, and it had been owned by the church for about one year. The bus had successfully made the same round-trip to Kings Island in July, 1987, was used daily for short local moves on school days, and had made several other long trips. It was checked over regularly by mechanically-inclined church members, including a civilian motor pool supervisor from nearby Fort Knox. Two new tires of a good commercial quality had been installed a week before the ill-fated trip, and front end suspension and steering parts examined at that time. From all indications, the bus was in good condition mechanically on May 14, 1988.

The trip before the crash

On the trip, the bus was driven by John Pearman, a part-time associate pastor of the church who was a local court clerk. The group left the church early that morning and traveled uneventfully to the park. They spent the whole day and early evening at Kings Island, then boarded the bus and began traveling out of Ohio and back into Northern Kentucky toward Radcliff. After about an hour, they stopped to fill the 60-gallon (227-litre) fuel tank with gasoline, then resumed the trip southward.

The crash

Just before 11:00 p.m., while heading south on Interstate 71 outside of Carrollton, Kentucky, the bus collided almost head-on with a black Toyota pickup truck which was traveling the wrong way (north in the southbound lanes) at a high speed on a curved stretch of the highway. The small truck was driven by Larry Wayne Mahoney, a 34 year-old factory worker who was intoxicated.

The right front of the pickup truck hit the right front of the bus, breaking off the bus's suspension and driving the leaf spring backward into the gas tank mounted behind an exterior panel but outside the heavier frame, just behind the step well for the front door rendering the door inoperable. Leaking gasoline from the punctured tank was ignited by sparks caused from metal parts of the suspension scraping along the road. As the seat covers and the highly flammable polyurethane foam padding ignited, the temperature inside the bus rose to an estimated 2,000 degrees and a thick cloud of noxious smoke enveloped the area from the ceiling down to seat level within a minute or two.

Evacuation difficulties

Nobody aboard the bus was seriously injured by the actual collision. However, the primary front loading door of the bus was jammed shut by impact damage and blocked by the fire which began immediately thereafter.

Almost all of the occupants of the bus began trying to exit through the single rear emergency door. Exceptions were the driver, one chaperone who was said by many survivors to have tried to douse the flames with the bus' fire extinguisher, and another chaperone, a small-bodied woman who managed to squeeze out a 9 in. x 24 in. (23 cm x 61 cm) window opening on the left side immediately adjacent to her seating position near the front. Of the four adults aboard the bus, she was the only survivor. Attempts by some of the other passengers to break or kick out any of the split-sash type side windows were unsuccessful.

According to the NTSB investigation, more than 60 persons trying to reach the only available exit—the rear emergency door—created a crush of bodies in the 12 in. (30 cm) aisle. Many passengers found themselves unable to move. A beverage cooler which had been earlier placed in the aisle near row 10 (of 11 rows of seats) further exacerbated this problem.

Passersby and some of the escaped passengers helped to extract immobilized children through the rear door, and help them to ground level about 3 ft (1 m) below. However, fire soon engulfed the entire interior of the bus, trapping the 27 people remaining aboard. At that point, no more passengers were accessible from outside the bus. Emergency vehicles had not yet arrived.

Transporting injured, removing those killed

After fire, rescue, and Kentucky State Police responded to the scene, treated and transported survivors, and extinguished the fire, a crane was used to load the bus onto a flatbed truck that transported the bus and those persons killed to the National Guard Armory in Carrollton. There, The KSP went through the interior of the bus seat by seat to find and remove bodies. Many bodies were found facing the only exit, the rear door. The coroner later determined that none of the bus occupants suffered broken bones or mortal injuries from the crash impact; all had died from the fire and smoke. Scott County Coroner John Goble then a trooper with the Kentucky State Police assisted with the investigation.

Among the bus survivors, one person's leg from just below the knee had to be amputated, and about ten others suffered disfiguring burns. Only 6 bus passengers were uninjured and virtually all suffered varied degrees of emotional trauma and survivor guilt syndrome. When authorities were able to tally the counts from the various hospitals and the bodies aboard the bus, and autopsies had been conducted, it was determined that 27 persons had been killed by the fire, and ano

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