Two children, aged four and five, were locked inside a parked school bus for hours, with no one searching for them. The incident occurred on Wednesday afternoon in a village in Chania and, as everyone involved admits, could have ended tragically.
According to information, the two toddlers remained inside the KTEL school bus, which was parked from the morning until it made its return midday route.
The way the incident was revealed is revealing in itself. As the parents reported, it all started when a mother went to give her child lunch, as the full-day school was starting that day. However, the school told her that the child had not gone at all . A search ensued, with the bus driver going to the parking lot just before 1 p.m. and finding not one, but two children in a bad condition.
“The children were crying, they had done it to themselves and were in a tragic state,” says a parent of a student at the local school.
According to the parents, the other children went down to school as normal during the morning commute. The two toddlers, who were reportedly sitting in the back seats , were left locked without being noticed.
“They’re going to preschool, maybe they didn’t hear the attendant, but shouldn’t the attendant have checked to see if everyone got off? How did she get in that position?” asks a parent, adding that “the kids don’t want to get back on the bus and neither do the parents want to put them back on.” Another mother focused on a purely random factor. “Luckily it was cool because of the rain, what if we had been hot?”
This question is not rhetorical. The temperature inside a closed vehicle can rise dramatically in a matter of minutes, and thermal entrapment of children in cars is an internationally recorded cause of death. The weather on that particular day was, in other words, the only reason the news story did not have a different ending.
Other questions arise from the case. Why wasn’t the bus checked by the driver and attendant before it was locked. Whether there is an adequate framework for protection and control for the persons placed in positions of daily contact with children. And whether the Police were immediately informed.
In communication with the Primary Education Directorate of Chania , it was learned that the service has been informed informally and will do whatever is necessary for its share.
For his part, the president of the Chania and Rethymno KTEL, Yiannis Kapsanakis, confirmed the incident. “We were informed about the incident and it is true. It did happen. The attendant was removed from her position, fired and from tomorrow there will be another lady in her place. She said that the children had fallen asleep and she did not see them. We are truly sorry for the incident and we apologize.”
The dismissal of the escort closes the issue of individual responsibility, but leaves the institutional one open. Checking the vehicle before locking it is not a matter of an employee’s conscientiousness but a procedure that should be mandatory, recorded and controlled. And the fact that two toddlers had to be located because a mother happened to bring food to school shows that, in this particular case, there was no safety check.
