Vijayawada/Hyderabad: Quick action by four locals who noticed a smoke coming a Hyderabad-bound TSRTC bus helped save the lives of 28 passengers on Thursday.
The four residents of Jupudi village of Ibrahimpatnam mandal in Krishna district — Arun Kumar, Nagaraju, Siva Sankar and Pushparaj — raced to the front of the bus and alerted the driver, who stopped the bus and got all passengers to alight. No one was injured.
Locals immediately rushed to douse the fire, and a fire brigade team reached the spot. The passengers were shifted to Hyderabad in another bus.
TSRTC regional manager Yadagiri Rao sent assistant engineers and other officials to assess damage to the bus and probe the cause of the fire. TSRTC executive director M. Ravinder said. “incident. We are probing the issue further to know the cause of the fire by taking the help of experts.”
The fire rescue team was of the opinion that a short-circuit may have caused the fire.
By a strange coincidence, another TSRTC Garuda bus, on the Warangal-Hyderabad route, had caught fire two years ago, on February 21 at Aleru in Yadadri district. Then, too, transport officials had blamed a short-circuit.
