The North Dakota Highway Patrol has identified a man who died when his pickup truck collided with a school bus Thursday afternoon in Nelson County.
Sixty-eight-year-old Archie Gronvold of Barton (ND) died in the accident about six miles south of Petersburg.
Authorities say, at about 3:45 PM, as Gronvold’s vehicle was westbound on County Road 4. As it crossed Highway 32, the pickup was hit on the driver’s side by the northbound bus, carrying members of the Hatton-Northwood volleyball team. Gronvold died at the scene.
Troopers say the bus driver, 56-year-old Shari Bilden of Northwood, was injured. The bus was carrying 26 passengers…including the coach, who was injured.
Beyond that, the state patrol says multiple passengers were transported to Altru Hospital in Grand Forks for treatment of injuries, but none of the students suffered any life-threatening injuries.
The crash remains under investigation.
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The accident created an emergency situation at Altru.
Altru’s senior director of clinic operations Heather Strandell says the hospital has an incident command system in place for such emergencies. She says Altru learned of the crash soon after it happened, which happened to be near the end of a shift.
Strandell said: “We sent out communications to our surgical teams, family medicine, pediatrics, anesthesiologists, hospital nurses. We actually kept everybody even if their shift was done. We asked them if they could stay until we received the patients to determine how many staff and physicians we needed.”
She added: “We had cleared all of our operating rooms, we finished cases, we kept our O.R. team as if…each one would have been used just in case. So a lot of it is, ‘Okay, we’re just going to keep our team members in anticipation of needing them and then, potentially more.”
Though things appeared crowded outside the Emergency Room with ambulances and helicopters, Strandell said Altru used social media to notify the public that it was prepared to help anyone who needed emergency care.
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(Photo: ND Highway Patrol)