Community coping with deadly accident

Interstate 70 crash: Community reaction

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Audio: 911 calls following fatal tanker truck and shuttle bus crash
Video: Fatal bus crash on I-70
Photos: 4 dead in I-70 collision
Center for developmentally disabled adults is a ‘family’

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By Tom Stafford, Staff Writer Updated 9:01 PM Thursday, January 7, 2010

SPRINGFIELD — The tight-knit community of people with developmental disabilities and the staff that serve them waited anxiously Thursday, Jan. 7, for details of the accident that killed four and injured six on a snowy Interstate 70 near South Vienna.

“It’s pretty devastating,” said Jennifer Rousculp, superintendent of the Clark County Department of Developmental Disabilities. “Many of the staff here, because we have such longevity, know many of the individuals” involved.

A bus from the Creative Learning Workshop on Leffel Lane was headed for Vienna Meadows residential facility when a westbound tanker truck slid across the median and crashed into the bus at 12:45 p.m. Thursday.

Quest Community Services, which also helps special needs adults, was “inundated with calls” before it was clear where the injured clients had been at Creative Learning Workshop, said staffer John Wade.

Aside from the confusion, “there’s been a lot of sadness and a lot of tears,” Wade said. “Almost everyone at Creative Learning used to come to us.”

Dan Barksdale, who spent more than 20 years administering programs for what was called the MRDD community before moving to the Mental Health and Recovery Board of Clark, Greene and Madison counties, described the closeness of relationships.

“What happens is that when you get to know people you’re working with and supporting, many times you spend your entire career working with the same people, and they become family. I haven’t worked there for more than 10 years, and I’m still very close with some of the individuals and families that I served.”

Rousculp said her department will work with Catholic Charities and Mental Health Services for Clark County to offer counseling to clients at Creative Learning Workshop and Vienna Meadows.

“Each person’s different” in the way they handle the news, said Wade, who is not a counselor, but who has experience with special needs adults.

“But they like to say their last goodbyes. They need closure, just like we do,” he said.

He said staff at his and other agencies “make an effort to take them to the viewing;” often have memorial services “right in the workshop;” and post photos in a special place.

“We remember our people,” Wade said.

The days to come are likely to involve a good deal of that.

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