“Be prepared” is the Boy Scouts of America motto, and a Marshalltown Fire Department (MFD) crew was applying that dictum Friday while they practiced a simulated school bus evacuation in full gear at Hoglund Bus Co.

The company, a fixture in Marshalltown since 1947, donated a school bus for the firefighters to practice vehicle stabilization and other drills, said company office coordinator Stephanie Alter.

Sections of the bus body had been cut open, and several windows were missing.

Fittingly, Friday was the last day of National School Bus Safety Week, an occasion not lost on MFD Deputy Fire Chief Christopher Cross.

“We spend thousands of hours training for any number of incidents that we are called to assist, and we must be prepared,” he said. “A school bus evacuation could happen at any time. Time is always critical in an emergency situation.”

Cross said that in his firefighting career, he has never been part of an actual school bus evacuation, but he envisioned a scene where law enforcement would be required to keep parents and others safely away from what he referred to as the “hot zone.”

Every school day dozens of school buses carrying hundreds and hundreds of students are criss-crossing the Marshalltown, East Marshall and West Marshall school districts.

The Marshalltown Community School District transports approximately 17,000 students annually.

Nationally, 26 million children in the U.S. take 480,000 buses to and from school each day.

On Friday, the firefighters, under the supervision of Cross and Lt. Nicholas Hanus, spent much of their time learning how to strategically place vehicle stabilization tools such as the Auto Crib-It under the body. One Auto Crib-It was placed under the bus body near the bus door. Its thick metal frame rested on solid, wood blocks several inches thick.

In the event of an incident involving a school bus and other vehicles, other specialized hydraulic tools are used, Cross said.

“We must be prepared to do what we say we are going to do,” he said.