Emily Blake: School bus crash victim
Reporter: Karen O’Sullivan
Producer: Sophie Kennedy-White
Date: 7 October 2011
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Guest reporter Karen O’Sullivan, from 7 News Melbourne, follows the heart-rending story of Emily Blake, the 11-year-old girl who suffered horrific brain injuries after her school bus was hit by a truck on a country road 30 kilometres south-east of Warrnambool, Victoria in November 2009.
Emily was airlifted to the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne where the same team of neurosurgeons who’d separated the conjoined twins, Trishna and Krishna, just a day before, operated on her.
From the first glimmer of a smile as she watches cartoons on TV, to her first tentative steps, this is a story of a family that refuses to buckle in tragedy. And a bus driver who must live with the consequences of a shocking accident when he was behind the wheel. And the biggest question of all, why are so many of our kids still travelling on school buses with no seat belts?
Emily's mother Sue Blake has advised that any money involved with the story will be donated to www.brainlink.org.au, a Victorian organisation that provides support, education and respite to people with acquired brain injuries and their families.
Further contact information
The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne
www.rch.org.au
The Royal Children's Hospital Foundation, Melbourne
www.rch.org.au/foundation/
Twitter @RCHFmelb
Facebook facebook.com/RoyalChildrensHospitalFoundation
Air Ambulance Victoria
www.ambulance.vic.gov.au/
Belt Up for Safety
www.beltupforsafety.org/
The Belt Up for Safety (B.U.S.) Action Group was established in 2001 following the death of a teenage boy on a school bus near Ulladulla on the south coast of NSW. Since then B.U.S. has been lobbying for standing to be eliminated on high speed country routes and for seatbelts on these and other high risk routes.
NSW School Bus Safety Committee
The NSW School Bus Safety Committee was established in May and have a representative from Belt Up for Safety Action Group on it.
A representative from the Committee said it had emailed the following statement to residents of the mid north coast of NSW, where it said "travelling on old stretches of the Pacific Hwy pose a particularly high risk for our children".
''A School Bus Safety Committee was set up recently by the NSW Government to look at ways to make school bus travel as safe as possible. This is our opportunity to let the Government know if we are worried about the fact that our school buses travel on the highway at high speed with:
- no seatbelts,
- children sometimes standing up,
- low, hard backed seats with steel bars across the top.''
So far the Committee has received 112 submissions, a representative told Sunday Night and urged viewers to go to the NSW Department of Transport website for more information and to view the submissions already received by this Committee.
http://www.transport.nsw.gov.au
You can email the NSW School Bus Safety Committee to ask it to recommend to Government that all school buses travelling in country areas have seatbelts contact the Independent Chair of the School Bus Safety Community Advisory Committee, Carol Walsh at carolynwalshnsw@gmail.com.
All submissions will be published unless there is a request from the author that they remain confidential."
