Survivors Recall Ordeal In The Bus, Attribute Their Escape to God's Grace
“The fire spread in a quick time and passengers had very little to escape from the fire. It took about 10 seconds to escape from the bus,” Akash said
BENGALURU: A passenger Akash was one among several passengers managed to escape from the raging fire in a bus which caught fire on its route to Bengaluru from Hyderabad. “A rebirth for me,” Akash said on his escape from the fire.
Recalling the fire incident, Akash said he woke up to a collision involving the bus in which he was travelling and noticed a fire on the left side of the door of the bus. He managed to escape from spreading fire through a window to the side of driver’ seat and some of his fellow passengers followed Akash to escape from being trapped inside the bus.
“The fire spread in a quick time and passengers had very little to escape from the fire. It took about 10 seconds to escape from the bus,” Akash said and stated “We were not in a position to rescue fellow passengers trapped inside the bus. While some passengers managed to jump out of the raging fire, about 12 passengers escaped the fire through the rear side of the bus.
“The scene at the raging fire was horrible, in particular, struggling passengers trapped inside the bus,” Akash said and stated he sustained minor injuries in trying to escape from the fire while he hit the ground hard resulting in a severe back pain.
Venu Gonda, a passenger on board the bus from Hyderabad to Bengaluru attributed his escape from the blaze to “God’s grace.” Venu recalled the bus fire and stated he woke up to come across fire in the frontier portion of the bus and initially tried to break the glass window panes at the rear end to escape from the fire. By then, a fellow-passenger managed to break the window panes of the rear end and as many as 15 passengers jumped out to safety.
The fire accident occurred after the bus had a pit stop en route to Bengaluru for about 20-minutes for passengers and 20-minutes later the accident took place, he recalled. “Smoke from the fire engulfed the bus and nothing was visible,” he stated.
“Owing to fire, tyres of the bus bursted,” he said and stated he and a couple of fellow passengers who escaped fire managed to board another bus on its way to Bengaluru to reach his destination safely.