LEWISTON — Bates College students on a first-year orientation trip narrowly escaped potential disaster Monday.

A Dirigo Bus Lines charter bus carrying about 20 Bates College students from Lewiston tilts precariously Monday on a steep slope on South Arm Road in Township C in northern Oxford County. Part of the road’s shoulder gave way during an outing for first-year students. Tracy Virgin photo

Twenty students were on a chartered bus carrying them on a small road near Lower Richardson Lake in northern Oxford County when the bus wound up in a precarious spot on a road that residents say is less than ideal.

Bates said the first-year students and trip leaders “had completed canoeing trips” in the Rangeley Lakes region and were returning to campus.

Just before 1 p.m. Monday, the college said in a prepared statement, a Dirigo Bus Lines driver hired to haul them around “encountered difficulties on a road between Mooselookmeguntic and Richardson lakes.”

The driver had “pulled over to let another vehicle pass on South Arm Road,” the college said, but when he tried to return to the road “the rear right wheel of the bus could not get traction on the soft shoulder, causing the bus to slide a few feet down an embankment on the edge of a forest.”

“The left front wheel lifted off the road,” it said.

Perry Virgin, who operates Virgin Auto Electric, left his house Monday to find a school bus “hanging over the edge” of “a very steep bank” about 500 feet from his driveway on South Arm Road in Township C, according to his wife, Tracy Virgin.

Students from Bates College in Lewiston wait beside a tilting bus Monday that slipped off South Arm Road in Township C in northern Oxford County. Neighbors in the area secured the bus to keep it from falling town a steep banking. There were no injuries. Tracy Virgin photo

Photographs taken by Tracy Virgin and shared with the Sun Journal show the bus was tilted at about a 30-degree angle after its rear end slipped toward the embankment when the soft soil along the shoulder of the dirt road gave way.

Bates said, “The driver called 911 and safely evacuated students via an emergency exit. No one was hurt.”

Perry Virgin said the back door of the bus was open when he arrived and students were “getting ready to jump out.”

But since the bus was “pretty tippy,” Tracy Virgin said, her husband told them to “hold on ‘till I get a chain on it.”

Once he’d secured the bus somewhat with a chain, she said, they got off.

“My husband had all of our food so he fed the kids cookies. They were happy,” Tracy Virgin said.

After the students and driver were off the bus, Perry Virgin and another man managed to attach chains to hold the bus in place until a wrecker could get there to pull it back onto the road.

Brent Berube, president of the Gorham-based bus company that Bates occasionally uses to charter school buses, said Wednesday his “investigation into this incident is still ongoing,” but he can say that the driver followed “standard operating procedures by immediately securing the bus, and making sure every student was safely evacuated before exiting the bus himself.”

He said there were two key factors that caused the problem: two vehicles meeting each other, going in opposite directions, “on a narrow loose gravel road” and the “very soft shoulders” in that location.

The college said that emergency response crews “took the students who had been on the bus to a nearby boat launch on Lower Richardson Lake to wait for another Dirigo Bus Lines vehicle to bring them back to campus.”

“We’re grateful for the driver’s quick actions in safely evacuating students from the bus,” the college said.

Berube said the incident “was particularly challenging due to almost no cell reception and the remote location. Upon contacting our central office we immediately dispatched a replacement bus and driver and myself to the scene.”

By the time he got there, Berube said, “The incident was wrapped up.”

“The bus was deemed safe to operate by the authorities and was driven back to base without further incident,” he said, though it has been “placed out of service until our maintenance department clears it to return to service.”

Andover Fire Chief Jim Adler said the road was blocked for about four hours.

Tracy Virgin said a car flipped over on the same bank about a year ago.

Bates offers a wide variety of mandatory short courses to incoming students to help them get acclimated with each other and to Maine. They generally pick the one they want.

Most of the courses in the Bates Annual Entering Students Orientation Program, referred to on campus as AESOP, include trips that range from climbing mountains to what the college bills as a “Beach Chillin’ trip.”

Several of the choices sent students on three-day trips to the woods and lakes near Rangeley, including two focused on canoeing on Mooselookmeguntic Lake and two others on nearby Richardson Lake. The Mooselookmeguntic groups were on the bus at the time of the mishap, Bates said.

The trips are led by students in upper classes who have expertise to oversee them. Bates said most of the trips have eight incoming students and two leaders, though they can have as many as 10 first-year students.

Efforts to reach some of the students involved were also unsuccessful Wednesday.