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Bodies tossed out on a steep hillside and cries for help are fresh memories for Jessica Seymour, a Maryville woman who described the fatal bus crash she and about 40 others happened upon during their trip last week in Ecuador.

Seymour, a 2002 graduate of Maryville High School and a graduate student in medical science at the University of Kentucky, was in this South American country to work as part of a medical mission team serving in clinics in Quito and Santo Domingo de los Colorados in the Andes Mountains. The group was giving checkups and treatments to children of poor families as part of the Shoulder to Shoulder Ecuador mission program.

The group from UK, Seymour said, was traveling along a narrow, winding, shoulderless stretch of highway through the mountains after having stopped for about 15 minutes to reload snacks and stretch their legs. It wasn't long before traffic came to a complete stop, she said.

Two of the UK medical residents rushed from the bus to see what was causing the snarl and discovered that a bus and tanker truck had collided, sending the bus full of passengers down a steep hill.

Springing into action

"The two doctors then called up to our bus and said 'bring help and supplies,'" Seymour explained via telephone from the UK campus. "People just jumped up and went down there."

Seymour was one of those who scaled down the mountainside, using both hands and feet for balance. When she reached the bottom, there were several people who had been thrown from the bus, many who were yelling for help and bleeding. Seymour said there were head injuries, eye injuries, broken bones and people too injured to walk up the hill.

She said she was instructed by the two UK residents to assist those who could make it to the top of the rocky hillside. The bus driver was killed and so were at least two others who were crushed under the bus.

"There was really no time to think; we just reacted," Seymour said. "I remember as we were running down the hill, a local man was yelling at us to stop. We just kept going. We were medical people who believed we could help them."

Seymour admits she felt helpless because of her lack of emergency on-the-job training and her less-than-perfect Spanish-speaking skills, but the situation could have been worse had her group not been one of the first to arrive. Seymour and the others ripped up T-shirts to make straps to hold victims on back boards.

"We were looking around everywhere for shoes so we could use them to support people's necks," Seymour said.

The UK students and residents were on the scene for over an hour. Seymour said she believes they were in the right place at the right time. That 15-minute break at the gas station put them right behind the accident and in position to make a difference.

Once they got back to their own buses, Seymour said she was afraid to travel on that narrow road, and the way locals drive was no comfort. "They will pass anywhere," she said.

The group from UK did arrive at their destination and will have stories to tell their children and grandchildren. Seymour said they were interviewed on television there and were made to feel like heroes.

Coming back home

Seymour graduated from Maryville High and then received her undergraduate degree from Transylvania University. She is completing her classroom work and will be finishing up a year of rotation specialties next July. She wants to come home and practice medicine here in Blount County as a physician assistant.

Although this was Seymour's first trip to Ecuador, a team of UK professors and students has traveled to Ecuador every year since 2002 to volunteer to work at medical clinics in Quito and Santo Domingo. This year there were 26 students, 11 faculty members and six staff members.

She said hero status is not what she feels today. Instead, this Maryville resident (her parents are Bill and Catherine Seymour) said the whole experience has been a learning one for her future career in medicine and a view of the world she wouldn't have gotten anywhere else.

It is all still sinking in.