'I felt like I was in a war': Cary-Grove bus crash that killed 7 students remembered 25 years later

The bus was running late the morning of Oct. 25, 1995.

Cindy Claver Austin, a Cary resident who was a sophomore at Cary-Grove High School at the time, recalls that she didn’t want to go to school that day, but she never imagined the tragedy that would end up striking during that bus ride.

Sunday marks 25 years from that day when the rear end of the school bus Claver Austin was on was hit by a Metra train at the intersection of Algonquin Road and Route 14 in Fox River Grove.

Seven students were killed, and many more were injured.

Memorials continue to remind the community of the students who died: Jeffrey Clark, Stephanie Fulham, Susanna Guzman, Michael Hoffman, Joe Kalte, Shawn Robinson and Tiffany Schneider.

And the memories of that day – and the days after – still linger for those involved.

They remember the horror of learning their friends died after a school bus driver drove over the train tracks at Algonquin Road, stopping at a red light with the bus’s rear extended about 3 feet into the path of the train. They remember the chaos of the emergency room as nurses and doctors treated patients, and frantic parents waiting in a firehouse to find out whether their children were all right.

But those in the area also remember how the community came together after the accident, how neighbors brought meals to those whose kids were in the hospital, how people grieved together, and how businesses in the area offered their condolences with signs and marquees honoring those who died.

On the morning of Oct. 25, 1995, Claver Austin got on a seat at the end of the bus next to her good friend Schneider, a beloved part of Claver Austin’s friend group. A substitute driver was at the helm.

“We were all freaking out because we were all going to be late for school that day,” Claver Austin said.

She said they didn’t even realize the bus was on the train tracks at the moment the accident happened.

The next moments play in her head in slow motion, but really, the events happened in seconds, Claver Austin said. The train gate hit their window, startling the two girls.

Claver Austin could hear kids yelling from the front of the bus, but she didn’t understand why.

“And then, from the corner of my eye, I see another kid run from the back to the front,” she said. “And when I looked over Tiffany’s shoulder, I saw a big headlight. And next thing I knew, it was over with.”

Claver Austin blacked out, and when she came to, she was on top of a bus seat behind her. She saw Schneider next to her and tried to wake her up until those at the scene told her to stop.

Claver Austin crawled out a window, although she couldn’t walk because her ankle was shattered.

In the hospital, because her lung collapsed – among other injuries – Claver Austin had a tube shoved up her lung. Because the hospital didn’t have her medical records, they couldn’t give her anything to sedate her.

“It was a very painful procedure. I remember screaming through it,” Claver Austin said.

She didn’t realize anyone had died – or that Schneider was among them – until she came to in the intensive care unit.

“For me, it was a tragic thing,” she said. “Before that, I’ve never experienced death ... and here it is with these people.”

Carla Claustro, who still lives in Fox River Grove, was a nurse in the ICU at Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington on the day of the crash.

Staff was working 12-hour nights, and it was close to the end of Claustro’s shift, about 7 a.m., when another nurse came in and said, “Oh, my God. There’s been a bus accident,” Claustro recalled.

“So before we were even notified as to a trauma coming in, we knew something happened,” Claustro said.

A code orange was called, which meant the hospital called in every resource it had, and most of the ICU nurses at the end of their shift had to stay and help. Those who thought their children were involved in the bus accident were allowed to go, but even some of them didn’t leave.

“They just went about their business and prayed that their children were OK,” she said.

Claustro was directed to triage outside the hospital as the ambulances came in. Some of her other co-workers were in the emergency room, tending to the kids who were arriving.

“It was just absolute chaos,” Claustro recalled. “I felt like I was in a war.”

One boy kept asking about his brother.

“We had to tell him that he didn’t make it,” Claustro said.

The kids who came in were clearly traumatized but strong, Claustro said. She eventually went home after working 16 hours, and her next-door neighbor came over and tried to calm Claustro down. Helicopters continued to hover around the area.

Claustro had been a nurse for a while at that point and previously had worked in burn units, so she had experienced other traumatizing cases before. This time, however, the tragedy hit close to home.

“It was just so close and personal because it was in my neighborhood,” she said. “Fox River Grove is a very close-knit community. And it was just everywhere.”

Although Claustro did not lose anyone in the crash, she said she was affected by the emotions of her co-workers and by the possibility that something like this could happen.

“I think it just brings everybody closer together, that recognition,” she said.

Fox River Grove resident Mary Lu Seidel, who lives three blocks from the train station, said surreal isn’t the right word for what happened.

“[It’s] beyond human comprehension, to absorb that kind of tragedy and what it did to people ... but then also how people came together,” Seidel said.

During a memorial service at Community United Methodist Church, people didn’t really talk, but they tried, in their own ways, to make sense of the tragedy, Seidel said.

“They were just sitting there, like, ‘I need something,’ ” Seidel said. “ ‘How do you cope with this?’ ”

It was hard, Seidel said, but they found comfort in community and neighbors. Each year on Oct. 25, Seidel always tries to go and put a little flower or other token at the memorial site.

One of the boys who died, Jeffrey Clark, was working on his Eagle Scout project at the time, so she likes to walk down the path he once worked on to remember “what that particular person did in his short life to make our community better.”

Claver Austin remembers Schneider as having “a lot of energy.”

“She was an amazing, amazing person, and she could make anyone laugh. She was a good soul,” she said.

Claver Austin, who was out of school for about a year after the crash and continues to feel the effects of the crash physically and mentally, became close with her late friend’s mother in the aftermath of the accident, and the whole community became closer as well, she said. Because her parents always were at the hospital, neighbors pitched in to provide meals for the family.

“We had dinners for a lifetime, it felt like, because every day a new neighbor would bring over a dinner for us, so we didn’t have to worry about a dinner,” she said. “The community grew a stronger bond. It really felt like that for a long time. Everyone was there to help each other out.”

That is what kept Claver Austin living in the area, despite the traumatic memories she has.

“It was a terrible day, but yet it’s a great community,” Claver Austin said. “I wanted my kids to be able to go to Cary-Grove High School and be able to grow up in such a close community.”