NEW ORLEANS — It was a shocking commute to school for some students Tuesday morning when their school bus got stuck in a pothole. A source told WWL Louisiana the school bus driver drove over a pothole at the intersection of Peach St and General Ogden, but instead of just feeling a little bump, the bus couldn't move.
They said the pothole collapsed even more and swallowed the tire.
Thankfully, no one was hurt. They had to tow the bus out of the pothole and when it was finally removed, the depth of the hole was visible.
A 311 request was submitted back on December 3, 2023, for the pothole, and the person who submitted it wrote they were concerned about the hole's proximity to the school that's on the corner.
A community member biked by the intersection after hearing of the incident to check out what was going on. Alan Delery says there are a lot of issues with street work in the neighborhood, and while he's thankful for the repairs, he says it's difficult getting around.
"It really is difficult in navigating where you’re going to be going to get from one point to another in the neighborhood and you’ll hit a left thinking it’s a good way to go, then you find out it’s so many repairs and they’re just doing temporary covering on them right now and so you don’t really know what you’re going to get," Delery said.
Sewerage and Water Board crews filled the hole with rocks a few hours after the school bus was relieved from the pothole. SWB says they're working to determine the issue so they can fix it properly.
"That looks like a failure related to the storm drain," Steve Nelson, General Superintendent of SWB said.
Nelson says they're trying to find ways to fix issues like this quicker but adds that in a city like New Orleans, they pop up often.
"We’re a really old city which is beautiful and wonderful and fabulous, but it does translate into some challenges for our infrastructure. Our water mains fail at a rate between 4.5 and 5 times the national average based on a study Utah state did," Nelson said.
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