Schoolteacher Mary Ludwig gets goose bumps when she remembers the first time she met bus driver Kevin McKay. “I said, ‘Who the heck are you?’” she says via Zoom. “’Cause I knew all the bus drivers from field trips. He’s like, ‘I’m Kevin McKay.’ I said, ‘You’d better be good!’”
The pair were setting off on a terrifying, five-hour journey with nearly two dozen elementary school students as the Camp fire engulfed Paradise, California, in 2018. It was the start of a beautiful friendship. “That day I met a stranger and put my complete trust in that stranger and today we’re very close, lifelong friends,” Ludwig adds.
Their story is told in the film The Lost Bus, directed by Paul Greengrass and now streaming on Apple TV+. Matthew McConaughey plays McKay while America Ferrera co-stars as Ludwig, who went along for the ride expecting a straightforward drop-off at a nearby school only to be caught in an inferno.
Greengrass – known for Bloody Sunday, United 93, Captain Phillips and the Jason Bourne franchise – says in production notes: “It’s a world far removed from Los Angeles, blue-collar, with its own culture and rhythm. From the first moment you see him [McConaughey] as Kevin, you believe he’s that bus driver whose life hasn’t gone as he hoped, and who finds in this crisis a chance for redemption.”
Back then McKay could feel the American dream slipping away. His divorce had led to a custody battle. He had recently lost his father to cancer and moved his mother, who had stage 4 melanoma and was barely able to walk, into his home. In April he had quit his job running a Walgreens pharmacy store so he could put himself back through college and took a job as a bus driver to make ends meet.
One night in November he had to get a vet to put down his pet dog, a procedure that became complicated and deprived him of sleep. The next morning, his son Shaun was home sick with stomach flu. It was also that day that a faulty power line would spark the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history, raging for more than two weeks, claiming 85 lives and virtually burning the town of Paradise off the map.
Ludwig knew something was wrong that morning even before she got to work at Ponderosa elementary school. The 57-year-old says from Chico, California: “I headed out to the car and stopped in my driveway because I have asthma and I was physically reacting to what was going on but visually it didn’t make sense.
“I got out of my car and looked at the sky and I’m like, it looks like it’s going to rain. My brain was telling me something different from what my body’s telling me. I went back in the house and got my dad’s handkerchief. I used that handkerchief on the bus that day.
“I drove up the street, but when you drive up along Pentz Road, the great pine trees mask the canyon, so my eyes were burning, my chest was tight but you don’t see anything. I was about five minutes late to work and some of my students were tearing into the classroom saying there’s logs falling from the sky like embers.”
Still relatively new to the job, McKay typically drove his bus on a route that did not include Ponderosa elementary. But as the fire took hold, a dispatcher asked if any drivers were available to evacuate the school. McKay, who had been hoping to make a quick stop at home to check on his mother and son, instinctively volunteered.
He soon arrived at Ponderosa elementary and picked up Ludwig and another teacher named Abbie Davis (they are combined in one character for the screen version) along with 22 students. Ludwig confesses: “I was a little bit terrified in the fact that I didn’t know him and here I was going to be evacuated.
“We had embers landing in our hair. When you walked out towards the bus, it was dark. It looked like midnight so you’re like, OK, who is this guy? But I had no control. All I could do was trust him and feel very blessed that he was there with me and driving us.”
What followed is the propulsive engine of Greengrass’s movie, a white-knuckle ride through one of the worst US wildfires with the lives of children at stake. Setting off on the bus, McKay and Ludwig saw their first fire within minutes. Two trees had been destroyed in a yard supposedly made fire safe.
McKay, 48, recounts from Chico: “My idea of a fire is ‘Hey, there’s a bear in the canyon, it’s heading towards town, so we should probably not be on that side of town.’ You move west instead of east and you’ll be fine. But what that made me realize was that those embers that were burning our heads were starting thousands of fires all over town.”
“The explosions I thought were like propane tanks exploding. Later, some of my Cal Fire [California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection] friends explained to me, when a house goes up in flames, there’s a pressure that builds up inside the house and that’ll generally explode through the windows.”
As they converse on Zoom and the memories flow, McKay and Ludwig at times find themselves on the brink of tears. She chimes in: “It was a lot of red taillights in the beginning, cars jam-packed. We saw pocket fires but the sounds of explosions were extremely strong, especially towards the end. Utter darkness and embers.
“The film truly captured the visual intensity and quiet fear that we all felt that day. That’s the feeling that I feel in my heart. There were segments of tons of noise and segments of silence. It was very intense.”
McKay admits she has given him the chills: “The quiet silence that we would have for a few minutes and then you hear maybe some horns or feel the heat on the windows of the bus. Without being silly, I don’t want to say like a horror movie, but it very much had a personality of silence and eeriness.
“Traffic would start moving and we would move and it’s like turning the page in a book. We’d move into a time of chaos. Somebody’s banging on the window of the bus and freaking out and screaming and there was a moment where a car hit the side of the bus.”
He adds: “Mary and I had to internalise all of that because as soon as we start freaking out we’re going to take the kids from a five to a 10 and the kids are going to be literally in a horror movie if they realise what’s happening.”
With smoke seeping in through the windows, McKay took off his shirt, which was torn into pieces and doused with water so the children could hold damp shreds to their mouths and breathe more easily. Ludwig offered McKay a bottle of water but he refused, saying the kids should take priority. She slammed the bottle on McKay’s shoulder and refused to take no for an answer.
He recalls: “She said, ‘Listen, tough guy, we need you to keep doing what you’re doing, drink that bottle.’ Oh my gosh, holy smokes, that was the best drink of water I have ever had! She ended up taking one of the pieces of my shirt that she had in her hand and poured some water on it and rubbed it on my forehead.
“The sensory overload I had in those moments filled me with something. It was overwhelming, the feeling of the water and the cool towel on my face. I had been so in the ‘fight or flight’ mechanism all day for hours that I had no idea. That stimulus of the cold rag on my forehead and then tasting the water brought my wits back to me for a little bit.
“That was before the craziest time that we experienced, driving past houses that are totally engulfed in flames. People all over the street screaming and yelling, cars running into each other. That was such an intense mile for us that honestly I hardly remember it because it was pure adrenaline. Hey, either way, I’m hitting the gas, we’re out of here.”
Ludwig was worried about her own son at home but drew inspiration from the memory of her father, a second world war veteran. She says: “There were difficult moments and I did my best to normalise. There was a moment where I caught myself. I was emotional. I was trying to get my son to wake up and get him out of the house. I looked to God, I looked to my parents, I looked to my dad and felt the strength. I put on that soldier mask.”
McKay, Ludwig and Davis had quiet conversations to plan for what would happen if they had to abandon the bus and continue on foot. They would pair older students with younger and split into three groups, each with a copy of the roll sheet in case the others did not make it. Fortunately, this did not prove necessary.
Through it all, the children displayed a stoicism beyond their years. Ludwig reflects: “The kids were so brave and so strong. We all tried to make it feel like we were on a field trip. We were trying to make it that we were going to this destination and we were going to get there. Some of the kids were playing rock, paper, scissors.
“We used some humor: the moment we tore up Kevin’s shirt, I told the kids, ‘Well, look who got the armpit.’ We saw the Black Bear Diner, and Kevin and I asked, ‘Who loves pancakes?’ We tried to make them giggle. We tried to do whatever we could to let them feel safe and let them know that everything was going to be OK. I feel like the kids were rock stars. I am proud of those children.”
When after 30 miles (48km) the bus finally reached safety, the bone-deep anxiety of waiting parents turned into relief and euphoria. Ludwig, who was on set to watch the scene dramatised, says: “We stayed till every last parent picked up their child and it was very emotional. I cried, Kevin cried; there were many tears. But it was beautiful to see that reunification.”
Both McKay, who fulfilled his dream of becoming a high school teacher, and Ludwig praise The Lost Bus for capturing the emotional truth of that day. Written by Greengrass and Brad Ingelsby, the movie is based on journalist Lizzie Johnson’s book Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire, which recounted true stories from a catastrophe that keeps replaying in California.
Now the Ukraine correspondent of the Washington Post newspaper, Johnson says by phone from Kyiv: “I hope by reading the book and seeing the film people will realize this affects all of us. We’ve built ourselves into this crisis by putting homes where they shouldn’t be. These fires are going to get worse before they get better. To pretend they’re going away is like sticking your head in the sand.”
