WAWAYANDA – The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has released documents from its investigation into the fatal Farmingdale High School band bus crash last September on Interstate 84 in Wawayanda.
The federal agency will release a final report on the cause of the crash at a later date. Forty students were treated at area hospitals, but two women, a music teacher and a chaperone, lost their lives in the crash.
According to the report, the bus driver, Lisa Schaffer, told investigators from Garnet Medical Center on September 24, 2023, that she “heard the boom, and the steering wheel whipped out of my hands, so I knew exactly what it was. I knew it was a front blowout.”
In the report, Schaffer added, “All I could see was my nightmare. That’s always been my nightmare. The curve of the road, nothing past it, and there I was. I was going. I couldn’t pull it back. So, it was going over.”
The bus, which was on its way to a band camp in Greeley, Pennsylvania, careened down a steep I-84 embankment.
“I didn’t see anything in the road prior to,” Schaffer added. “I know it was on a curve because I’m looking over the edge. And that’s how quick it was.”
One of the key findings in the NTSB’s report was that at least 41 of 44 bus occupants, including Schaffer, were not wearing seat belts at the time of the accident. The NTSB also confirmed that the failure of the bus’s left steering axle tire led to the fateful crash. Approximately 30 lawsuits have been filed in connection with the accident.
The NTSB also interviewed several Farmingdale students about the crash and they recalled a horrifying scene in the moments after the crash.
“A lot of kids around me were, like, screaming,” one student said.
“There’s no way that happened. Like, this has to be a dream,” another student said.
