ROBBINSDALE, Minn. — Dozens of cars slid off the road Wednesday during peak morning commute times. Rain overnight turned streets and sidewalks into skating rinks that took no mercy on commuters.
"When I went out to defrost the car, I noticed a school bus had slid down the road," Erica Garcia Jones said.
She lives on Halifax St. in Robbinsdale. She says a NorthStar bus hit the ice on the hill and slid into a snowbank. The bus company says the driver was helping cover other routes and usually doesn't drive that street. He was taking students to a north Minneapolis charter school.
"The driver felt so bad. It wasn't his fault. Police officers couldn't reach him because the road was so bad," Garcia Jones said.
She said two other busses went on to get stuck at the bottom of the hill.
"I see this and think that it was avoidable if schools could just delay or have an E learning day," Garcia Jones said.
The Robbinsdale School District is comprised of roughly 20 schools. Their spokesperson Toya Stewart Downey says the district cannot delay school because of their tiered bus system. A delay of the high school would send a ripple effect to the other schools.
She emailed KARE:
"There were no accidents today, no injuries, we had 8 different buses that had issues with going up hills, going down hills, getting stuck behind cars that couldn't move. There is a video of NorthStar bus that slide into a snowbank that was posted by Robbinsdale family saying was Robbinsdale but that is not us."
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