“We saw flames soaring into the sky! Black smoke. Firefighters and police came to cordon off the entire neighborhood. It was like in a movie,” said the young man in front of a safety boundary sign that must not be crossed.
This Thursday, at around 16.30, a bus belonging to the Acary company and traveling for the Compiègne Regional Agglomeration (ARC) caught fire at its stop, along the railway tracks, a few tens of meters from the station entrance. The fire did not cause any casualties.
The driver’s “exemplary” reflex
“It was a line 4 bus that was parked. A passer-by saw the fire coming from the engine block at the back and immediately alerted the driver. Aged 24, with only three years of experience, he immediately dropped off the 12 passengers, forgetting all his belongings, his house keys… He has exemplary reflexes,” underlined the deputy mayor in charge of transport, Nicolas Leday.
The fire quickly spread to the vehicle. Within minutes, there was “fire 25 m high”. Then there was an explosion, namely the explosion of a tire that was unable to withstand the heat of the flames. “They flew into the parking lot across from it,” the elected official added to describe the explosive force of the blast.
A young woman, who had just returned from Paris, saw the video of the fire circulating on social networks: “I was very scared because I parked my car right next to him. Luckily, he had nothing. »
“Honestly, we are hot”
Firefighters intervened at 4:40 p.m. Three spears were deployed to prevent the spread and extinguish the bus. Nicolas Leday was relieved, because for him, the situation could have been more dramatic.
“To be honest, we were overheated. If the network driver had not been warned, he would have continued his route and gone to rue Solférino, one of the main arteries of the city center, a very busy street. If the tire had exploded at that time, there might have been casualties. »
The bus, which had successfully passed technical inspection the previous week, was completely destroyed. City and national police stepped in to block all access points to the station from traffic, leading to huge traffic jams in the city. The police investigation, for now, focuses on spontaneous engine combustion.
