80 years later, Lake Chelan still holds 9 victims from WA’s worst school bus tragedy

A school bus crash that claimed 16 lives in Lake Chelan remains Washington’s deadliest school-related tragedy, according to HistoryLink .

Eighty years ago Wednesday, on Nov. 26, 1945, a Lake Chelan School District bus carrying 20 students and an adult passenger slid off South Lakeshore Road during a winter storm and dropped roughly 30 feet into the lake’s frigid water.

Only six people survived.

Driver Royal J. “Jack” Randle, 24, was on his normal route along the west side of the lake when the storm intensified.

The unpaved road, built years earlier after the construction of Lake Chelan Dam raised water levels and forced new shoreline roads, had no guardrails.

Visibility was poor as snow built up on the windshield, eventually stopping the wipers.

According to survivors’ accounts, Ra