SHERRARD, Ill. — Editor's note: The video attached aired May 29.
During the morning hours of May 24, a derecho blew through the Quad Cities region. The strong storm system brought a total of 16 tornadoes, according to the National Weather Service.
One of those tornadoes was in Coyne Center, a census-designated area of Rock Island County. Sherrard bus driver Rose Smith was driving around 50 students to school when the EF-1 tornado touched down. She quickly evacuated students from the bus and took them inside the old Coyne Center School, where they stayed in place for around ten minutes.
"My heart just started pumping and my stomach started hurting," Matherville fifth grader Jaxon Beaulieu said.
"I was scared," Beaulieu's classmate Knox Driessens added. "I started texting my parents and then all of the phones on the bus started buzzing I was like, 'Oh shoot, what's gonna happen?'"
Smith said that in the 26 years she has worked as a bus driver, she has never had to evacuate her bus.
"It's my job to keep them [sic] kids safe. I feel like they're my kids when they're on my bus," Smith said. "They're my responsibility so I just did what I did 'cause it's my job."
Jaxon, Knox and Cayden Smith, another kid who was on the bus, said that after they saw some of the damage in Coyne Center, they were even more grateful to "Miss Rose."
"I'mma say thank you for all your hard work, especially for keeping us safe and taking us to a building to keep us safe and all that," Cayden said. "I would like to thank her for that."
A large outbuilding on the Coyne family farm sustained significant damage, along with multiple trees in the area. NWS confirmed the tornado touched down around 7:52 a.m. and traveled northeast for about 20 miles through Rock Island and Henry Counties. It was last spotted near Green River, Illinois around 8:16 a.m. Wind speeds reached 110 mph with a maximum width of about 50 yards.
Watch more news, weather and sports on News 8's YouTube channel