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- NATION, Page 21American NotesTEXASDeath on a Clear Day
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- At 7:40 a.m. last Thursday, the yellow school bus was bound
- for schools in Mission, Texas. Approaching at a crossroads was
- a soft-drink delivery truck. The truck and bus suddenly
- collided, and the bus veered into a gravel pit filled with water
- 20 ft. deep.
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- Passing driver Mike Herrera quickly jumped into the pit and
- helped three students out of the bus. Al Nye, who was driving
- his own children to school, also plunged in, pulling seven
- bodies from the water. Nye, a scuba diver, said efforts to help
- the children were hampered by water so opaque that it was
- impossible to see. Trapped children struggled to get out the
- front door, windows and one rear-end exit door. "I didn't expect
- to be alive, but I'm alive," said one. Twenty youngsters died
- and 63 people were injured, including the two drivers, in the
- worst school-bus accident in Texas history.
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