‘The Lost Bus’: What’s the Real Story Behind the Apple TV+ Movie?

After directing United 93 and Captain Phillips, Paul Greengrass has turned his camera lens to another true story of heroism with the new Apple TV+ film The Lost Bus, coming to the streamer on Friday, October 3.

The Lost Bus is described as “a white-knuckle ride through one of America’s deadliest wildfires as a wayward school bus driver (Matthew McConaughey) and a dedicated school teacher (America Ferrera) battle to save 22 children from the terrifying inferno.”

-Greengrass and co-screenwriter Brad Ingelsby (Mare of Easttown) didn’t have to do much to deliver a nail-biter of a film. Based on the bravery of real-life bus driver Kevin McKay — and details from the book Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire by Lizzie Johnson — The Lost Bus tells a story that so easy could have had another ending.

The Camp Fire devastated the area of Paradise, California.

As Biography notes in a profile of McKay, it was a Pacific Gas and Electric Company power line that sparked the Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire California had seen at the time.

Over two weeks, the blaze burned 153,336 acres of land, destroyed 19,000 structures, caused damage totaling an estimated $16.5 billion, and killed 85 people. (PG&E would later agree to a settlement of $13.5 billion to settle victims’ claims.)

The fire broke out on November 8, 2018, and McKay had only been working as a bus driver for Ponderosa Elementary in Paradise, California, for a few months, per CNN.

“He worked at a Walgreens for a really long time,” Johnson, the author of Paradise, told NPR. “It was a very stable job. And, you know, the entire time, he kind of felt this itching in the back of his head that he wanted to do something more. And so he had quit his good, well-paying job and got a job as a bus driver at the local school district in Paradise to save money as he was going back to college to get a teaching degree.”

Bus driver Kevin McKay drove into the inferno’s path to save 22 children.

As the fire expanded on November 8, McKay answered an emergency call to evacuate 22 Paradise Elementary students whose parents hadn’t made it to pick them up, as well as the schoolteachers Abbie Davis and Mary Ludwig.

As he revealed to CBS News just days after his heroic drive, McKay had lost his house in the Camp Fire, but he had gotten his own family to safety, and he wanted to save other children, too.

“I just knew that things were going to continue to escalate,” he said. “[I was] frightened. Absolutely.”

Smoke from the wildfire surrounded the bus, and when the kids started showing symptoms of smoke inhalation, McKay took off his shirt so that Davis and Ludvig could tear the fabric into rags that could douse with water and give to the kids to breathe through.

“We were coughing, and my eyes were hurting. I knew we had to do something,” he said. “And that was our best option with what we had.”

Johnson told NPR that McKay also had the teachers make a manifest “in case the only thing getting pulled out of that bus were bodies.”

McKay recalled fire “coming down in 1,000 places.”

In his CNN interview, McKay said the Camp Fire was unlike any other wildfire he’d seen. “The fact that it was coming down in 1,000 places, it was unheard of,” he said.

Both he and Ludwig described a hellish landscape that day in Paradise. “It was very scary. It felt like Armageddon,” Ludwig said.

“It just kind of looked like we’d be headed into Mordor,” added McKay.

As McKay drove the kids to safety, fires surrounded the bus. “That’s when we realized — it’s a silly statement, but Paradise is lost,” McKay said.

At one point, a car sideswiped the bus, and McKay and the others witnessed other car accidents amid the chaos.

McKay was the “bus driver from heaven,” teacher Mary Ludwig said.

Ultimately, with the fire, smoke, and gridlock, it took five hours for McKay to drive the bus roughly 30 miles to safety. “We didn’t leave until every kid was accounted for, and every kid was with their mom and dad,” McKay said.

Davis thought they wouldn’t make it, but they did, and all 22 children were reunited with their parents. Davis’ husband hugged McKay so hard, he “damned near lifted me off the ground,” McKay told CNN.

“We had the bus driver from heaven,” Ludwig added.

Even so, McKay deflected praise. “Our firemen were going the opposite direction we were,” he told CBS News. “And that’s pretty awesome.”

The Lost Bus, Friday, October 3, Apple TV+