A vehicle struck a bus bringing students to school in northeastern Minnesota on Thursday, sending 12 students and both drivers to the hospital, according to St. Louis County School District Superintendent Reggie Engebritson.

According to the Minnesota State Patrol, the bus rolled and 21 students on board suffered minor, non-life-threatening injuries.

The crash happened at 7:52 a.m. Thursday at the intersection of Townline Road and County Road 5 in rural Hibbing between a 2006 Toyota RAV4 driven by Svea Lynn Snickers, 19, of Alborn, and the 2021 Bluebird school bus driven by Shawn Allen Lindula, 52, of Iron, according to the State Patrol.

Snickers, the RAV4 driver, was taken to a Duluth hospital with life-threatening injuries, and Lindula, the bus driver, was taken to the Virginia hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, according to the State Patrol.

The State Patrol is investigating the crash.

According to Engebritson, the driver of the vehicle “went through a stop sign and hit the bus on Highway 5.” The students on the bus were in kindergarten through 12th grade and were headed to Cherry School.

Engebritson said additional support staff, counselors and social workers were at the school to support students and staff.

“We’re providing support for everyone at Cherry and doing our best,” he said.

Thursday’s crash is the second incident involving a St. Louis County School District bus in eight days.

On the morning of Sept. 4, a school bus driver with 18 South Ridge students on board was arrested for driving while impaired. No students were injured, and the driver, Anthony Stephen Israelson, 44, of Culver, was charged this week with two gross misdemeanor counts of driving while impaired.

— Forum News Service

Small wildfire limiting some BWCA access

A small wildfire is burning in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, prompting the closure of several lakes, portages and an entry point.

The U.S. Forest Service said the fire was detected at about 11 a.m. Tuesday on an island in Wood Lake with a surrounding environment of “thick vegetation and a significant amount of spruce-budworm-infested balsam fir.”

The fire was 3 acres and 0% contained on Thursday afternoon, the same as Wednesday evening, according to the fire’s Incident Information System entry.

“Firefighting resources made good progress (Wednesday) and had good overnight relative humidity recovery and light winds that minimized fire spread,” according to an incident update Thursday. “The fire is currently backing down off the ridge to Wood Lake. Ground resources are looking at suppression opportunities by strengthening containment lines and scouting for good natural landscape features such as drainages and wetlands to tie into as containment areas.”

The island on Wood Lake is approximately 14 miles northeast of Ely and 2 miles north of Fernberg Road in Lake County.

On Thursday, the U.S. Forest Service ordered a closure of the area around the fire, effective immediately and lasting until the fire is out unless it is rescinded sooner.

On Wednesday, the Forest Service said the fire is “suspected to be human-caused,” but an official fire investigation has not been completed.

The BWCAW and surrounding area are also dry. The most recent U.S. Drought Monitor, updated Thursday, puts all of northeastern Minnesota in the “abnormally dry” category.

— Forum News Service

Man, 81, dies after paraglider crashes

A man flying a paraglider died after his aircraft flew into a tree and he fell from a considerable distance in a crash south of Brainerd.

The 81-year-old Brainerd man, identified Thursday as Wayne Kyar, was flying paragliders with a friend early Wednesday evening. The friend landed his powered paraglider in an open grassy field by North Central Speedway. When Kyar came in to land, it appears there was a mechanical malfunction.

On Wednesday night, Crow Wing County Sheriff Eric Klang said that the preliminary assessment suggested something fell off the back of the paraglider’s engine and broke the propeller, causing the aircraft to crash into the trees. Kyar was hung up in a tree. Klang said it appears the man tried to unbuckle himself from the suspended wreck when he fell perhaps as far as 50 feet.

Lifesaving efforts were undertaken by emergency responders, but Kyar died at the scene.

“We’ll be doing a thorough investigation and trying to gather as much information as we can on it,” Klang said.

— Forum News Service

Boat sinks amid search for missing diver

Wisconsin officials were working Thursday to retrieve a boat that sank during the search for a missing diver in Lake Michigan.

Multiple agencies joined the search for Patrick Kelly, 72, of Winthrop Harbor, Ill., after he failed to surface Tuesday while diving around the wreck of the S.S. Wisconsin about 6 miles off the shore of Pleasant Prairie. Searchers recovered Kelly’s body Wednesday.

The Kenosha County Fire and Rescue Association’s search boat started taking on water Tuesday afternoon about 4 miles from shore, WDJT-TV reported. Other boats rescued the eight crew members and most of their equipment before the vessel sank about 65 feet to the bottom of the lake.

— Associated Press

Searchers find no sign of 1968 plane crash

An ambitious high-tech search in Michigan’s Lake Superior so far has turned up no sign of a plane that crashed in 1968, killing three people who were on a scientific research trip.

An autonomous vessel was launched Monday in a section of the vast lake where the Beechcraft Queen Air is believed to have crashed off the Keweenaw Peninsula. The Armada 8 sends sonar readings and other data to experts trailing it on boats.

“We have not definitively confirmed any targets as aircraft at this time,” said Travis White, a research engineer at the Great Lakes Research Center at Michigan Technological University, speaking from a boat Thursday.

The plane carrying pilot Robert Carew, co-pilot Gordon Jones and graduate student Velayudh Krishna Menon left Madison, Wis., for Lake Superior on Oct. 23, 1968. They were collecting information on temperature and water radiation for the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Seat cushions and pieces of stray metal have washed ashore over decades. But the plane wreckage and the remains of the men have never been found. That area of the lake is 400 feet deep.

— Associated Press