SALEM - Jim Keung was at work Friday afternoon at Country Financial in Mount Pleasant when he received the kind of call almost any parent would dread.

"My wife called me frantic, saying a semi hit the (school) bus," said Keung, whose 8-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son were on the bus. "It really didn't register the whole way here. It didn't set in until I came here on scene and saw what happened."

Keung was among parents Friday afternoon in the yard of Breezy Hill Nursery, anxiously awaiting word of the fate of students injured in a horrific semitrailer-school bus crash on Highway 50, just west of Highway B near the Silver Lake village limits.

Fourteen children and two adults were injured in the crash, which was reported at 3:41 p.m.

Two of the students - including a boy disembarking from the bus at the time of the crash who was ejected onto pavement - were transported by air ambulances to Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa. Three others in the crash, including the semi's driver, were seriously hurt, the Kenosha County Sheriff's Department reported.

The bus was carrying 14 students ages 5 to 12 from Wheatland Center School, a K-8 school in Wheatland, about five miles south of Burlington, and from St. Alphonus Catholic School in New Munster, an old unincorporated community in Wheatland and about the same distance to Burlington.

Sgt. Gill Benn of the Kenosha County Sheriff's Department said the other 14 injured were transported by ground ambulances to hospitals. One was taken to Kenosha Memorial Hospital, six to St. Catherine's Medical Center in Pleasant Prairie, four to Aurora Medical Center in Kenosha and three to Aurora Memorial Hospital in Burlington.

Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said none of the injuries are considered life-threatening. Benn said injuries included lacerations, fractures and burns. The semi was on fire for a short time after the crash, said Darin Noyes, a battalion chief with the Salem Fire and Rescue Department.

Four alarms were sounded for the crash, Noyes said, bringing eight ground ambulances, four air helicopters and fire units from four fire departments. The units came from Kenosha County and Lake County, Ill.

When Noyes arrived on scene, some children were walking around and some lay injured along the grassy areas along the south side of Highway 50. At least one of the passers-by who stopped to aid crash victims was a physician, Noyes said.

Joe Nowicki heard the accident from his desk at Miles Truck Service & Sales, located just east of the crash site. The company is owned by the family who had a son injured in the crash.

Nowicki said it sounded like a big explosion. He called 911 after he heard the crash and went outside to see the wreckage.

"There were a lot of children that looked injured and a lot of scared people," he said

Noyes said that the semi was on fire when he arrived, but employees of the Miles company had extinguished much of the fire.

Kenosha County sheriff's deputies and Wisconsin State Patrol troopers were investigating the crash Friday night. But Beth Friday afternoon said preliminary investigation showed the semi driver may have been distracted just prior to the crash, perhaps by drinking a soda.

"We see very little skid marks beyond the impact point, so we believe there was almost no braking prior to the semi striking the bus," Beth said.

The bus belongs to the Wheatland school district, and had stopped to make a drop-off at the Miles home in the 29000 block of 75th Street (Highway 50) when the eastbound semi came over a hill and slammed into the back of the bus.

The speed limit on the highway is 55 miles per hour, and the bus stop was located on the crest of a small hill. Beth said deputies told him the hill on the roadway should not have made it difficult for the semi driver to see the bus, which had its red lights flashing at the time of the crash.

The identity of the driver was not being released Friday. His blood will be tested for alcohol and drugs, a standard procedure for this type of crash.

The semi was from Darien-based Wisconsin Logistics Inc. The driver was seriously injured and taken to a Kenosha area hospital, sheriff's officials said. He was making statements to investigators at the hospital, Beth said Friday afternoon at the scene.

The force of the impact spun the eastbound bus around so the front of the bus was facing west. The front end of the semi was demolished. The semi trailer was loaded with boxes of a liquid food product. Some of the boxes spilled onto the roadway.

Salem resident Scott Duban received a phone call from his 13-year-old son, Steve, who was on the bus.

"I could tell he was pretty upset," Duban said as ambulances were still on the scene. "I don't know where he is at this point and it is a frustrating thing. He said it didn't look too bad, but obviously it was worse than he described."

Duban stood with other worried parents on the grounds of Breezy Hill Nursery waiting to hear if his son was there or had been transported to a hospital. Firefighters were holding back relatives and the media at the nursery while rescue helicopters landed and took off from the scene.

Keung, whose children were back home Friday night, said the subdivision he and his family live in located just east of the intersection of highways B and 50 is the final stop on the bus route from Wheatland Center School.

Keung said he recently had a conversation with his daughter about the fact seat belts are not used on the bus. "Two weeks after we talk about it, something like this happens," he said.

Diann Tesar, the Salem town chairwoman, finds the hill where the crash occurred dangerous.

"It's a total blind spot there," Tesar said.

"A drop-off there is not going to be something we will neglect," Tesar said. "My recommendation would be to have a turnaround for that bus or for it to pull into the driveway."

Tesar said there are plans to install a stoplight at the intersection of Highways 50 and B, just east of the crash site. The light was proposed last year and will be installed this year.

Traffic in both directions on Highway 50, the principal route between I-94 and Lake Geneva, was closed much of the night. Three large tow trucks from Jensen Towing arrived just after 7 p.m. to begin clearing the scene.

Journal Times staff writers Lindsay Fiori and Janine Anderson contributed to this report.