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CALGARY – A Calgary school bus company is investigating the theft of hundreds of batteries from their buses.

Southland Transportation says thieves broke into their 48th Avenue N.E. bus depot and stole batteries from 79 vehicles.

Each bus contained multiple batteries. In total, the theft is pegged at $20,000.

Southland Transportation says the theft happened sometime between 2 p.m. on Sunday and 5:30 a.m. on Monday.

“We do have security that comes through here,” says Assistant General Manager Kyrie Guertz. “So whether [thieves] sat and watched, or whether they they knew the history of the comings and goings [of staff]… we just don’t know.”

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“It’s very unusual,” added Guertz. “I cannot even begin to decipher why this would have happened, why they would have chosen this volume of damage.”

The incident caused Southland’s school buses to be late for over 100 bus routes on Monday, impacting thousands of families throughout Calgary.

“We’re looking at about 60 families per bus,” explains Guertz. “And some of these buses actually do two school runs. The numbers are huge.”‘

Officials did have access to some extra buses, but it did little to ease their shortage.

“We actually have spare buses all over the city. We did send drivers to other locations to pick up units.”

Batteries have been replaced in the majority of the affected buses, and Guertz says their services will be back to normally by Monday afternoon.