An overnight fire demolished a northwest Iowa school system’s entire fleet of 11 buses, along with a host of other equipment from tractors to snow plows. Students in the Sergeant Bluff/Luton School District didn’t have to wait for the school bus this morning. There were none left — after fire destroyed the school’s bus barn.
Superintendent Rich Caldwell says parents are being asked to carpool their kids to and from classes today. Caldwell says they’re calling neighboring school systems to see if there are any spare buses.
He says; “We need seven route buses. Woodbury Central has already volunteered a couple of buses to us and Lawton Bronson has a couple. We’re going to call Westwood, Hinton and Sioux City and see if we can borrow a couple buses.”
Caldwell says the bus barn contained more than just school buses. He says, “The simplest way to say it is, if we owned it and it had tires on it, it was in the bus barn.” That includes lawn mowers, tractors, snow removal equipment and more.
There’s no damage estimate yet. The state fire marshal’s office is investigating the cause of the blaze.