A school bus crash that claimed 16 lives in Lake Chelan remains Washington’s deadliest school-related tragedy, according to HistoryLink.
Eighty years ago Wednesday, on Nov. 26, 1945, a Lake Chelan School District bus carrying 20 students and an adult passenger slid off South Lakeshore Road during a winter storm and dropped roughly 30 feet into the lake’s frigid water.
Only six people survived.
Driver Royal J. “Jack” Randle, 24, was on his normal route along the west side of the lake when the storm intensified.
The unpaved road, built years earlier after the construction of Lake Chelan Dam raised water levels and forced new shoreline roads, had no guardrails.
Visibility was poor as snow built up on the windshield, eventually stopping the wipers.
According to survivors’ accounts, Randle pulled over to clear the glass, but the bus struck a rock outcropping and was knocked off-course.
It slid down a steep embankment and rolled twice before landing upright on a submerged boulder with its front end underwater.
Randle, injured and trapped at the wheel, told students to escape as water rushed in.
The bus then shifted off the rock and sank.
Only six people made it out before it disappeared: Mrs. Glenna Brown, 37; and students Donald Mack, 13; Ethel Keck, 9; Robert Watson, 8; Peggy Rice, 16; and Mari Condon, 17.
Mack swam ashore and climbed the bank, eventually reaching a Forest Service emergency phone box.
Condon and Watson joined him on the road, flagging down passing drivers.
Rice, credited with pulling several survivors out of the water, was still on the shore when the first car arrived — driven by her father, Albert Rice.
He and other motorists took the survivors to the hospital in Chelan.
Officials spent hours trying to determine how many children were on the bus.
A clear list of names wasn’t confirmed until nearly 1 p.m.
Emergency crews from across Chelan County crowded the scene as snow continued falling at nearly an inch per hour.
Fire crews waited with resuscitation equipment.
The Red Cross provided shelter and food for responders.
A tugboat and ore barge were moved into place so divers could search below the surface.
The first divers entered the lake at 6:10 p.m. that day using deep-sea equipment brought from Grand Coulee Dam.
Brothers Colin and D.S. “Mac” O’Donnell recovered the body of 15-year-old Henry Davis.
The next day, divers located another victim, Forman Ronald Ayers, 13, and followed a trail of paint scrapings and debris down a rocky underwater ravine.
But they could not safely go past 200 feet.
The Washington State Patrol asked the Navy to take over, and a team from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island arrived with helium diving gear and a portable decompression chamber.
Experts believed the bus might be resting on a shelf about 280 feet down — but warned that the ledge dropped abruptly into depths of more than 1,400 feet.
By Dec. 1, Navy divers finally found the bus upside down on a rock ledge 210 feet below the surface and roughly 275 feet from shore.
It was raised with cables and winches, but only five victims were inside: the driver and four students.
The other nine were never found.
The bodies were brought to Chelan City Hall for identification.
On Dec. 5, 1945, Chelan schools, businesses, and offices closed so the community could attend funeral services.
Boats later gathered at the crash site for a memorial on the lake.
State Patrol investigators concluded the bus struck the rocks because blowing snow obscured Randle’s view as the road curved right.
No mechanical issues were found.
Local families argued that guardrails, long promised along the lakeshore, would likely have prevented the disaster.
Students and local businesses raised money for a monument and small park near the crash site, located along today’s State Route 971.
The names of the 16 victims are memorialized there, overlooking the deep water where the bus disappeared.
The victims were: Lewis Asklund, 11; Barbara J. Asklund, 8; Forman Ronald Ayers, 13; Anna Dam, 10; Karl Dam, 6; Dorothy M. Davis, 17; Henry T. Davis, 15; Vernard J. Gilmore, 7; Roger Douglas Hale, 8; Lenley Stuart Hale, 6; Jean E. Keck, 13; Donna A. Keck, 7; Larry L. Miller, 6; Bettie L. Miller, 9; Ruth Hawley, 9; and the driver, Royal J. Randle, 24.
Nine of the victims were never recovered — a mystery consistent with Lake Chelan’s reputation for hiding what sinks into its depths.
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