Kia Rousseve had been led to believe the school bus she drove for work in New Orleans was supposed to be relatively pristine, but she never let that lull her into a false sense of security.

By a margin of moments, that attitude helped save nine students – and her – from being inside the bus when it unexpectedly exploded and became engulfed in flames.

A statement providing details about the episode, which has gone viral in some online circles dedicated to positive news items, declared Rousseve “courage on wheels”. Meanwhile, the 28-year-old maintains she was simply relieved to keep her wits about her in a potentially deadly situation.

“I’m just happy and glad that God was with me and I got the kids off the bus and got myself off the bus,” especially because she is a mother to a young child herself, Rousseve said in an interview.

Bus fires across the US aren’t uncommon, though not every one is as dramatic as the one that endangered Rousseve and her passengers – with slightly more than one being reported daily on average, according to data previously compiled by the federal department of transportation.

Rousseve had about a half dozen more stops to go on her route to New Orleans’s Lafayette Academy about 7am on 13 March when she realized her school bus was losing power and had started to smoke. She pulled over to the side of the road right away, not wanting to take any chances.

That’s when a girl outside caught her attention and frantically told Rousseve there was a fire underneath the bus.

Rousseve recounts that she quickly ushered each of her passengers – all students between kindergarten and eighth grade – off the bus through the front door. She said she grabbed her purse, turned the bus off, stepped down to the street to wait for help and immediately heard a series of booms.

She turned and was stunned to see the front of the bus wrapped in flames, a scene that erupted within view of a nearby surveillance camera.

“The bus blew up in a split second,” said Rousseve, who used her phone to capture her own images of the blaze. “If I would have still been on that bus, I would have blown up with that bus.”

After receiving word of the bus fire and evacuation, Rousseve said her supervisor sent her a text message thanking her for “making sure the babies were safe”. A statement said “her ability to stay calm in the face of danger, ensuring not a single child came to harm is nothing short of heroic”.

“It’s a poignant reminder of the crucial role bus drivers play in our lives, often going unnoticed until a moment of crisis thrusts them into the spotlight,” said the statement, which was first reported by Nola.com.

Yet Rousseve said her heroics weren’t enough to spare her from corporate absurdity. Even though she and her colleagues suspect a faulty alternator caused the rather new bus to ignite, Rousseve was required to take a drug test shortly after the blaze.

She wasn’t worried about passing the test, whose result indeed came back negative, she said. However, she said it offended her that she was put through the same protocol she would have been put through if she had crashed the bus, when it was obvious the fire had not resulted from a traffic accident.

Rousseve, in her third year driving school buses, also said that each passing day has made it more difficult for her to process how close her brush with peril was.

“I mean, I’m traumatized,” Rousseve said. “I’m really afraid to even drive a school bus now.”