An off-duty ambulance team leader jumped into the River Itchen with an untrained member of the public to help children on a crashed double decker bus near Eastleigh.
Jade Etheridge, a team leader for the 111 service and a nearby resident, said she saw “everybody gathered around the railings” as a Bluestar bus full of 19 Barton Peveril College students plunged into the Itchen off Bishopstoke Road.
She was left "covered in mud, covered in blood" after helping, but said once she had seen the bus, her immediate thought was to jump in to help "lots of screaming teenagers".
“There was the bus driver, bless his heart, he was shouting for help,” Jade said.
“He was up to his chest in mud and I could see him laying sideways across out of the seat. There was another girl, a teenage girl, screaming.”
Jade went into the river through stairs in resident James West’s garden, and immediately saw that the back door to the bus had come open.
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“I don’t know if they managed to push that off to get out, but I smacked the back of the bus and said somebody help me up,” the South Central Ambulance Service team leader explained.
“I was sinking in the mud. There was a lad upstairs, shouting down they were stuck and that somebody was injured.”
At this point, another man, who did not have any first aid training, jumped into the bus holding a first aid kit.
They worked together and Jade took the lead, directing those who could walk and talk off the bus so she could triage the five passengers who were more seriously injured.
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“I checked all of them when they were getting off the back of the bus,” she said.
“They had bumps, bruises, bloody noises. I checked them all. There were a couple of quite nasty head injuries, a lad with probably a dislocated arm.
“Apparently the bus driver had shouted for them to brace themselves.”
Jade noted that she spent time “on the floor” with one of the students who was “quite seriously hurt”.
READ MORE: Bishopstoke bus crash: Pictures show extent of damage
She said: “Two of the students, I did do first aid on, but everybody that was up walking and talking we got off the bus.
“We had to triage the more serious injuries. If you can walk and talk, then out of the way, because there were five that were taken to hospital, and a couple of them were quite seriously injured.”
Jade praised the other man for jumping into the bus with her, despite being untrained.
“I think he deserves credit for jumping into a situation that was quite frankly terrifying,” she said.
“You don’t know what you’re going to find in a situation like that.
“When I got into the bus, it was a puddle of water, and by the time I was getting off, it was up to my shin.
“It was a sinking bus, it’s not deep but it was cold, wet, muddy and we had nothing but a first aid kit to help these people.”
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Jade said a lot of people “stood staring” as they helped the students out of the bus.
“After everything, I’ve walked home, covered in mud, covered in blood,” she said.
She said that she wanted to tell her story because of all of the “silly comments” on social media as residents complained that they had to “cancel plans”.
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