North Seattle College Students React To Bridge Crash

Monday will be the first day of school for North Seattle College. The students in the international program will have a lot more than school on their minds. They’ll be thinking about the four students who died in a bus crash on the Aurora bridge Thursday.

TRANSCRIPT

Students in the international programs at North Seattle College get close, fast.

Max Putera and Jeffrey Tung met for the first time on Monday. Putera is from Indonesia, and Tung is from Taiwan.

Putera was scheduled to be on that bus – the one that crashed. Tung tells his friend, when he heard the news, he was distraught.

Tung: "And I keep on messaging you – no reply, everybody’s worried sick, even our instructor, even he was calling you and nobody can find you."

Putera had decided to skip the field trip and sleep in.

Putera: "I don’t really check my phone every five minutes, so ... But when I checked, I replied as fast as possible."

The event has made some students afraid. Jiayue Chen is a student from China.

Chen: "We need to pay more attention to the safety of the students."

It’s an idea that’s probably going through the minds of the parents of these students.

Dean Cuccia works for the college. He says he hopes those parents will understand their kids are safe here. He says this could have happened anywhere.

Cuccia: "I don’t want them to think Seattle is a bad place because of this."

The college has set up a hotline to deal with questions from families here and around the world.

It’s 206-934-3672.