Raging Bus Fire on Way to Meet Doesn’t Derail Stanford Track Team – runnersworld.com

For a few pivotal moments on the bus, there was no separation between members of the Stanford track and field team.

Instead of distance runners only talking to distance runners, jumpers with jumpers, or throwers hanging out exclusively with their training partners, the captains suggested a new approach: Each athlete would sit with a teammate from a different event group, learn about their individual goals, and find the best way to support them during the University of Washington Invitational, which took place this past Friday and Saturday.

The team-building exercise was new, and it paid off sooner than anyone expected.

While the team members were chatting, the scent of burning rubber started to fill the air as the charter bus traveled down Interstate 5 toward downtown Seattle on Friday afternoon. A loud boom erupted from beneath the bus. The driver pulled over to the side of the road to inspect the vehicle, and almost immediately returned to instruct head coach Chris Miltenberg to get the team off the bus: A fire was brewing.

“We had 30 athletes and me on the bus, and everybody just got up really quickly, got their backpacks, and we were off the bus,” Miltenberg told Runner’s World. “Our athletes were incredibly calm and composed. I don’t really think in that moment anybody had a real sense yet that this could get bad, which was a good thing because everyone stayed calm and we got out of there quick.”

Coincidentally, NCAA javelin champion Mackenzie Little was in the middle of an Instagram takeover on the NCAA Track and Field account when the accident took place.

After the athletes evacuated, flames started to climb up the side of the bus. Following the driver’s instructions, Miltenberg calmly led the team along the shoulder of the interstate to get far away from the vehicle, which had a full tank of gas.

“It didn’t register to me all the things that could happen right now. We couldn’t worry about that. We had to do what we had to do,” he said. “It’s a lot like what you try to teach your athletes. You can’t control what happens to you, you just have to control how you respond to it.”

Within minutes, the bus that the team had just evacuated was engulfed in flames below the bridge at South Spokane Street. Once the team was a safe distance away from the blaze, Miltenberg told his athletes to call their parents and take a positive perspective on what could have been a dangerous situation.

“More than anything I think it turned into a great reminder of perspective, of what could have happened to us at any given moment. I do think for our athletes living on a college campus, sometimes you get tunnel vision,” he said. “If you’re going to draw something positive from such an unbelievable thing, it’s a reminder for all of us to stop and appreciate what you have in your life and not lose sight of that.”

While the fire raged, all northbound lanes of traffic were closed for nearly an hour, causing a four-mile backup on northbound I-5, according to the Seattle Times. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Firefighters arrived quickly to put out the blaze, and managed to save the team’s luggage, though the exterior of their bags were charred.

The team waited for about an hour and a half before a city bus arrived to transport them to the Dempsey Indoor track facility, where the athletes did their final practice before competing at the invitational on Saturday. Washington’s equipment manager washed all of their uniforms to get rid of the smoke smell before the competition.

“If it was a bus filled with strangers I think it could have created a very different dynamic, but we’re all such good friends that everyone was pretty calm and comfortable,” All-American Alex Ostberg said.

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Back in November, the team finished fifth overall at the NCAA championships in Madison, Wisconsin, in freezing, snowy conditions. That sparked them to set a new goal: to improve their adaptability in unfamiliar situations.

That mindset was tested with the fire, and it seems like their goal was achieved: On Saturday, Ostberg became the 18th athlete in Stanford program history to break four minutes in the mile. In a breakthrough performance, he improved on his previous personal best by six seconds when he crossed the finish line in 3:59.31 for fourth place. In the same day, Isaiah Brandt-Sims broke the school record in the 60-meter dash, Aria Small won the triple jump, Lena Giger won the shot put competition, and Kaitlyn Merritt earned the No. 2 spot on Stanford’s all-time list in the pole vault.

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After Ostberg crossed the finish line, the first people to offer congratulations to the distance runner were none other than the Stanford throwers.

“That was a really special moment because it was bigger than any one thing that I did individually,” Ostberg said. “It was really unique to be able to celebrate that with the whole team that was there.”