On Saturday, October 27, 2018, the Lee’s Summit Fire Department, in conjunction with the National Association of Pupil Transportation’s (NAPT) annual conference will conduct a “school bus burning” demonstration at Lee’s Summit Fire Station 7 from 1 p.m. to approximately 4 p.m.

There will be a considerable amount of smoke in the area of the station at SW Pryor and SW Scherer roads during the demonstration. Fire crews will be assigned as safety and to participate in the demonstration. Appropriate permissions have been received from the state and federal environmental agencies.

The purpose of the demonstration is to show how fast a school bus will burn, and how quickly an evacuation would need to take place. This is part of the ongoing discussion on possibly requiring seat belts on school buses.

The NAPT estimates close to 350 conference attendees will be present to observe the event. This isn’t the first time the NAPT has provided a demonstration involving a bus. At its conference in KC several years ago they held an “active shooter” demonstration at Woodland Elementary. There were attendees from as far away as Europe and Australia at that event.

NAPT will provide the buses for the event and afterwards the buses will be left for the Lee’s Summit Fire Department to use for rescue training later in the week. There will be no additional fires taking place after Saturday.

For information about the National Association of Pupil Transportation’s annual conference and demonstration, please contact NAPT Executive Director Mike Martin at 1-800-989-6278, or by email at info@napt.org.