Hoge's Heroes: Pregnant Driver Evacuates 37 Kids off School Bus—just Before It's Engulfed in Flames

If you saved one person’s life, you’d be considered a hero. But if you saved 37, you’d have to be considered some sort of superhero.

But that’s exactly what Milwaukee bus driver Imunek Williams did last month when she rushed kids ranging from kindergartners to high schoolers off the smoke-filled vehicle—seconds before it burst into flames. Did I mention she was eight months pregnant at the time?

Imunek Williams — who is 8 months pregnant (!) — saved 37 kids from a bus fire on Wednesday at 18th and Highland in Milwaukee. She is a true hero!https://t.co/8ksNmAz8Wx pic.twitter.com/qMIyPVKP5B
— Mallory Anderson (@MalloryNews) June 2, 2023

She was two hours into her shift and only about half a mile from her destination, the Milwaukee Academy of Science, when smoke started filling the bus:

I started to smell something funny at the stoplight, and I just thought it was normal smoke coming from another car.
But then as I started to drive more, the smell and the smoke started to get thicker.

The quick-thinking mom-to-be didn’t waste any time, explaining to a local news outlet how she jumped into action:

I was like, OK—let’s just get off the bus. I just told the kids, let’s get off. I evacuated the bus. Make sure everyone was off and made them line up against the gate.

Luckily she didn’t hesitate because if she had, things could have been a whole lot worse.

And as soon as we stepped off the gate, I turned around and the bus was just in flames.

In an interview with another outlet, Williams went into further detail about her thought process during the critical period before the bus was fully engulfed in fire.

School bus driver Imunek Williams was just two blocks away from dropping a group of students off at the Milwaukee Academy of Science when she suddenly smelled something burning. Minutes later, the bus was engulfed in flames. https://t.co/Ql8Ba5sm4I pic.twitter.com/oYkP1btswD
— CNN (@CNN) June 4, 2023

She said it was the awful smell that really had her worried:

I mean, I don’t say I think it’s was my sense of smell. Like, the smell really bothered me—like it made my stomach hurt. It just ithrew me off. So I just was like, OK. And when the kids are on my bus, they’re like my children. So I just treat them as if they’re my kids.
And if it was my kid on a different bus, I would want the bus driver to do the same thing. So I just reacted in a way that I would want somebody to react for my son.

One of the anchors wanted to know if she’s heard from any grateful parents. Williams had:

I did. I actually had a parent message me on Instagram yesterday and she just thanked me. She actually had five kids that day on the bus and she just wanted to thank me personally for, you know, reacting the way I did.

All that’s left of the bus now is a debris pile. Milwaukee police are investigating the cause of the fire but do not consider its origin suspicious. “Everyone’s OK so that just makes me happy,” Willaims concluded.

Nice work.

This is the second in a series about everyday heroes that don’t necessarily make the front pages. I’m hoping readers will send me stories of people they know or who they’ve read about who have done heroic acts—large or small, physical or otherwise—that have made someone’s life better or saved them from danger. Please email me with any tips at [email protected] or DM me on Twitter. Thanks!