By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
State Route 169 in Logandale was closed for a time on Wednesday from the Gubler Bridge to Yamashita because of an accident which occurred on the highway at the Lyman Street curve. The crash, involving a school bus and a mini van in a head-on collision, occurred just before 9:00 in the morning.
According to Nevada Highway Patrol, the minivan was travelling north on Moapa Valley Blvd approaching the curve at Lyman Street. At the same time, the school bus was travelling southbound approaching the same curve.
Officers at the scene on Wednesday reported that the driver of the mini van said that he had glanced down for a moment while reaching over to pick up something. In that moment of distraction the vehicle veered into the southbound lane and collided with the bus head-on as it was coming around the corner.
Fortunately, there were no students aboard the bus at the time of the accident.
Mercy Air helicopter was called to the scene to transport the driver of the mini van to a hospital to be treated for injuries that were deemed non-life threatening. The helicopter was landed on the highway just north of the accident to load and transport the patient.
The bus driver escaped the crash without significant injuries.
Shortly after the collision, a spark from an electric short in the engine compartment of the mini-van ignited a fire which quickly spread to the front end of the bus.
Metro officers who were the first responders to the scene were busy getting the drivers to safety and tending to their injuries. Meanwhile the fire continued to spread.
“The front end of the bus was fully involved and I was afraid that the whole thing was going to go up in flames,” said local Metro officer Cory Estes.
That is when Moapa Valley Water District employee Dan Bevan and his partner Justin Postma happened upon the scene. Bevan said that there were some onlookers who had fire extinguishers trying to fight the fire when it was still small. The local fire department had not yet arrived on the scene.
“They were working on the fire so we went on by at first,” Bevan said in an interview last week. “But we just had a gut feeling that we probably ought to go back. So we turned around (at Anasazi Aveue) and came back. By then the fire was quite a bit bigger and it was clear that the fire extinguishers hadn’t done the job.”
Bevan’s truck was pulling a trailer with a pressure washer and two tanks full of water. He and Postma immediately went to work fighting the flames with the pressure washer apparatus.
“I was nervous about getting it done,” Bevan said. “With the size of that fire, a pressure washer wasn’t quite the right tool to fight it with.”
But the two men were able to fight the flames back somewhat. Postma was able to look into the engine compartment and see that the van’s battery was still connected and an open wire was arcing an electric current, causing the fire.
“Justin was able to reach in there and unhook the battery connection, so that kind of stopped it at the source,” Bevan said. “We were able to get it under control after that.”
Shortly afterwards, Moapa Valley Fire District volunteer firefighting units from Logandale Station 73 and Overton Station 74 arrived on the scene and were able to completely extinguish the fire. At that point, Bevan and Postma went on their way and about their usual business.
“If they hadn’t been there we would’ve had a much bigger problem on our hands,” said Officer Estes. “It was good of them to just stop, see what needed to be done, and help out that way.”
