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The smoke started filling the bus, so McKay removed the t-shirt from his back. He and two teachers in the bus ripped him apart and sprinkled them with water. The children kept the wet tissue pieces in their mouths and breathed through them.
The fire was declared early in the morning of November 8, around 6:30 am, forcing many people to evacuate Butte County.
McKay, 41, began to worry. He had already seen forest fires, he said. "But the fact that it's down to 1,000 places is unheard of," McKay told CNN during an interview Sunday in a park in Chico, a city to the south. West of Paradise.
He saw flames approaching the school in both directions.
His son, his mother and his girlfriend had already been evacuated to a hotel in Chico that morning. "It released me to focus completely on this terrifying situation," McKay said.
Most of the other students' family members had already recovered their children.
But nearly two dozen students were stranded because their family members did not go to school. McKay discussed the evacuation of students with the Ponderosa principal.
& # 39; It was like Armageddon & # 39;
Abbie Davis, a 29-year-old kindergarten teacher in Ponderosa, and Mary Ludwig, 50, a second-year teacher, were evacuated with McKay and the students.
Ludwig recalled that "the sky was really threatening".
"It was very scary, it was like Armageddon," she said Sunday.
"It looked like we were going into Mordor," said McKay, referring to the realm of the evil Lord Sauron in the books and films of "Lord the Rings".
While they were walking away from school on smoke-filled roads, the bus was found stuck in the blockage of vehicles attempting to leave Paradise. Should they leave the bus, they wondered?
Davis and Ludwig walked the bus lane to comfort the students.
As the smoke intensified, the young lungs filled up. One student said that they felt tired. Davis saw other children dozing off.
The adults had to improvise. There was only one bottle of water on the bus. McKay took off his shirt. They tore and sprayed the strips of cloth with water so students could use them to breathe properly, they said.
"It seemed to help," said McKay.
During the trip, McKay and the teachers also created their own emergency plan: pair the little kids with the big kids. Take the roll. Get phone numbers. Review the operation of the emergency exits, the first aid kit and the fire extinguisher.
& # 39; Paradise is lost & # 39;
Charlotte Merz, 10, a fourth grade, said she had tried to stay calm and that she remembered "going to my place of happiness" during the trip.
The smoke made it difficult to see. "It was so crazy, and there were fires left and right, everywhere you looked," she says.
McKay said: "It's at that point that we realized – it's a silly statement, but paradise is lost."
Save another teacher
At one point, a car swept them away, McKay recalled. It looked like someone was hitting the bus, Davis said. They saw other collisions of the road.
On the way, they took a passenger. She was a teacher at a primary school in the nearby town of Biggs, whose car was down.
Davis said that she thought she was going to die several times during the trip. At one point, they prayed, said Ludwig.
A few hours later, parents and children were reunited. McKay said that Davis' husband had hugged him so hard that he "almost raised me off the ground".
Recounting their escape Sunday, McKay was modest. Safety is an important part of the role of the bus driver, he said, and he had to pay attention to these courses.
But Davis and Ludwig said McKay was a real hero.
"We had the bus driver from paradise," Ludwig said.
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