Last night, we told you about the Transparent BPO bus which spontaneously caught on fire. It happened at around 6:45 yesterday morning between Miles 8 and 9 on the Philip Goldson Highway. The driver, Branson Rhaburn, had only just stopped for another employee, and he was moving off, when suddenly, the engine caught on fire with everyone onboard.
As viewers may imagine, it caused widespread panic with the employees onboard running for the back exit. Very fortunately, nobody was seriously hurt, but today, we managed to catch up with one of those passengers who was inside the bus when they started smelling smoke.
She told us that the quick thinking of the bus driver was instrumental in the getting everyone out of the bus in time before it became completely engulfed:
Indira Cayetano, Employee - Transparent BPO
"I was like 3 seats at the back and the driver Branson Rhaburn he just said "fire" and we were all shook, we never expected our bus to be caught on fire and we started jumped out the back of the bus and we were helping people of the bus and a couple ladies sprain their ankles and a couple guys fell down. But the best part is that we all got out and after the last 3 persons got out when I look into the bus I saw the fire already half way the bus just coming towards us and others start screaming and crying and we tried to get from far away from the bus as possible and then there was a butane truck coming and another girl ran across the street and she told me that I cannot pass, its already engulfed in flames. Then our manager Vincent Thomas he was another bus and he says just try and back away and try to get out of here as quick as possible. What I liked about how Branson reacted, he opened up the cover from the engine and when he saw that he stood on top of it trying to conceal that fire for us to come out. And he actually inhaled a lot of smoke, because when we came off and we start asking for him, he couldn't even breathe and then I contact Bert Manzanares, our manager for the transportation and they started talking to him and his first thing was I asked him Branson are you okay? He said did everybody come out and I said yes. I was told he even went back into the bus to check and see if all of us were safe. People might say its his fault, but it's not, because anything as simple as a tyre without enough pressure he would tell us about this - I'm not going that fast because this is happening and all that. So we are very grateful for that and by God's grace all of us are here living with a sprain ankle or hurt back, but we are all living and safe."
At this time, it is still not certain what caused the fire.
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