CHP Inspects Bus to Find Cause of Accident : Safety: Relatives are upset by the incident. A school official says drivers are required to check the vehicles before they go out.

California Highway Patrol investigators inspected a Ventura school bus Tuesday to determine why two rear wheels popped off during a field trip to a Santa Paula pumpkin patch earlier this week.

The investigation came as parents and other relatives of the children riding in the bus expressed shock that the accident could have happened.

Two children were mildly injured Monday morning when the 17-year-old Ventura Unified School District bus lost its two rear left wheels while traveling about 50 m.p.h. on the southbound Ventura Freeway.

The bus, which was taking 35 second- and third-graders from Ventura’s E. P. Foster School and three adults on the field trip, came to an abrupt halt on the right shoulder, according to Principal Gregory Kampf.

“Everyone’s pretty upset about this accident,” said Roberta Hernandez, a family friend who received the call that second-grader Anthony Johnson was among those injured.

“They should have made sure that bus was all right before sending those kids on that field trip,” she said.

Several CHP investigators inspected the bus, its two discarded wheels and the rear axle in a storage yard behind the school district offices on East Santa Clara Street on Tuesday afternoon, but CHP spokesman Jim Utter said investigators would not complete their report until Friday.

According to Steve Penney, director of support services for the district, bus drivers are required to carry out an intensive safety inspection each time they drive. Visual and manual checks on all wheel lug nuts are included on the checklist, he added.

In her accident report, bus driver Mildred Hill told district maintenance supervisors that she had checked the lug nuts before leaving the bus yard Monday morning, Penney said.

“It appears that she might have overlooked the lug nuts, but at this time I just can’t say,” Penney said. “We do not have any evidence to suspect operator-forced error.”

Vanessa Baker, co-president of E. P. Foster’s Parent Teacher Assn., was on the bus with her 8-year-old son, Justin, when the accident occurred.

Baker, who said she drives her two children to school because she is generally apprehensive about school buses, said something seemed wrong from the minute the bus left the school.

“We thought the bus was swaying real bad--it almost seemed like there was too much air in the tires. It seemed to be going back and forth between the lines, and there was a loud, grinding sound,” she said.

Baker credited Hill with doing “an excellent job” once the wheels popped off, but added that many of the children panicked as the bus veered toward the shoulder near the Santa Paula Freeway.

“This incident had better be a warning to the maintenance people that they need to take care of the buses,” Baker added.

All California school buses are inspected annually by the CHP, according to Inspection Supervisor Bob Pedroli.

State laws also stipulate that school district maintenance teams check buses every 45 days or 3,000 miles, Penney said.

The bus that malfunctioned Monday passed a CHP inspection in March and was checked by district employees Sept. 24, Penney said. “At that time, all the lug nuts were tight, and the bus was in satisfactory condition.”

None of this was comforting to Ruth Lopez, whose 7-year-old grandson, Daniel Gonzales, was injured Monday.

“Last night, Daniel woke up screaming that he wasn’t going to go on the bus anymore,” Lopez said.

Lopez said the accident could have been much worse and questioned why seat belts have not become mandatory on California school buses.

“Why can’t the kids have a seat belt? The bus driver has one--what about the kids?”