Frozen fuel lines spur cancellations in two school districts

By OWEN BOSS

Staff Writer

Students in two local school districts awoke to an unexpected day off this morning, thanks to record low temperatures overnight Sunday that fouled up their school bus fleets.

All public school students in the South Hadley and Central Berkshire school districts received automated alerts between 6 and 7 a.m. announcing that school had been cancelled because bus drivers were unable to start their routes on-schedule.

School officials reported that temperatures, which dipped to -20 degrees Fahrenheit in some parts of Hampshire County, had "gelled" the diesel fuel inside the buses' gas tanks and made starting impossible.

News 22 meteorologist Brian Lapis reported that Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee recorded an all-time overnight low temperature for the date of -20 degrees, which he said would have felt colder because that reading didn't take the wind chill into consideration.

In his eight years of working as South Hadley's superintendent of schools, Gus Sayer said he has seen school start-times delayed as the result of frozen fuel lines but never a full cancellation.

"We had a half-day scheduled today because of a professional day, and ordinarily I would have just postponed school to give the buses time to warm up," Sayer said. "But if we did that, kids would be coming in later and then just turning around and going home, so we couldn't do that."

South Hadley schools, which include Plains Elementary School, Mosier Elementary School, Michael E. Smith Middle School and South Hadley High School, use buses provided by Five Star Transportation Inc., which is located in Agawam but has a bus garage in South Hadley.

Attempts to reach employees at the town's bus garage were unsuccessful this afternoon.

Over at Berkshire Trail Elementary School in Cummington, Principal Lorraine Liantonio was dealing with a very similar situation.

"We had a district-wide cancellation because of our buses being unable to start," Liantonio said. "We always add five extra days to the end of our school calendar, and we've already had four snow days. So we're collecting them too quickly, but we still have one left before we go over."

Schools in the Central Berkshire district, she said, use buses from Dufour Tours Inc., located in Hinsdale.

Kay Hall, an employee at Dufour's school bus garage, said the problem wasn't that the company wasn't prepared for cold weather, but that the overnight low was far lower than expected.

"We haven't seen these kind of temperatures for a long, long time, and whenever you see temperatures drop this low, this is what happens," Hall said.

Owen Boss can oboss@gazettenet.com.