Firefighters have praised the actions of a Sydney bus driver who safely evacuated all passengers before the bus was completely destroyed by a fierce blaze.
The fire ripped through the bus in Glebe in the centre of Sydney on Monday evening, a spokesman for Fire and Rescue NSW said.
“All the passengers and the driver were evacuated by the quick actions of the driver,” the spokesman told Guardian Australia.
Firefighters were called to the fire about 6pm after it caught alight on Parramatta Road at the corner of Glebe Point Road.
“Firefighters quickly arrived on scene and identified there was a bus alight,” Fire and Rescue said. “They immediately got to work and by 6.20pm they had managed to control the vast majority of the fire. Firefighting operations will continue for a little while longer.”
Massive bus fire on Parramatta Road right now. Passengers would have had seconds to evacuate. pic.twitter.com/MKRTtyHVxe
— Jenni Hagedorn (@jenniwashere) January 11, 2021
The nearby Victoria Park pool was evacuated as a series of loud bangs came from the burning bus. Witness Benjamin Riley said on Twitter the bus burned up over five minutes while the “tyres exploded in the heat and everything”.
Jeffrey Rae was standing in Victoria Park when he saw the fire and ran over.
“First I thought it was a shop on fire then I thought ‘Oh shit it’s a bus’,” he told Guardian Australia.
“I thought ‘Oh my god there could be heaps of people in that’. There was black smoke everywhere – you couldn’t see anything. If it wasn’t for the Covid, imagine. If it was normal times and that was full of people.”
Transport for NSW confirmed there were no injuries sustained in the fire.
“There will an investigation into the incident,” a spokesman told Guardian Australia. He said the cause of the fire was not yet known.
