Heroic Sisters Save Dozens Of People, Mostly Children, From School Bus Fire In Mississippi

A busload of passengers, the majority of them school kids, may have two sisters to thank for their lives.

Bettye Windom and her sister, Beth, both from Mississippi, were driving behind a Claiborne County school bus when they noticed it was giving off black smoke, WAPT reported. They made several attempts to get the bus to pull over but were unable to get the driver's attention. Eventually, they pulled their car in front of the bus, forcing it to stop.

"We saw the school bus and it was smoking real bad," Bettye Windom told the outlet. "We knew we had to get those kids out of the bus."

The sisters, along with the adults on board the bus, helped to get the children out safely just moments before flames consumed the entire vehicle, WAPT reported. One girl hurt her shoulder getting off the bus, but other than that, none of the students, who were on their way back from taking a state test, were seriously injured.

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"It took three minutes after we got everyone out for the bus to burn down," Windom, 24, told Yahoo's Good News blog.

Windom had recently purchased the car that she used to stop the burning bus, but she didn't hesitate to jeopardize her new car in order to help save the lives of the people on board, the outlet reported.

"I would much rather save the kids than the vehicle," she told Yahoo. "A life means a lot more."

Because of their quick actions, the sisters may have saved the lives of more than two dozen people who were on board the bus. Since the incident, insurance appraisers have ruled that the damage to the bus has made it unsalvageable, WLOX 13 News reported.

Windom, who works at the postal office, is also a volunteer firefighter.

"I don't think I'm a hero," she told WLOX 13 News. "I'm just happy that everybody was OK."