A fire tore through a bus carrying an airport-bound Chinese tour group on National Freeway No. 2 yesterday afternoon, killing all 26 people onboard. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
The 24-member tour group from Dalian in Liaoning Province included 15 women, six men and three youngsters, the youngest of whom was 11, the Tourism Bureau said, while the other two fatalities were the bus driver, Su Wen-cheng (蘇文成), and a guide surnamed Cheng (鄭).
The group had arrived in Taiwan on Tuesday last week and were scheduled to return home yesterday afternoon on a flight from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, the bureau said.
Photo: AP / Yan Cheng / Scoop Commune
The National Highway Police Bureau said the bus appeared to have veered out of control after catching fire and then hit the guard rails on the outer lane of the freeway’s westbound lanes.
Police bureau footage shows smoke emerging from the roof of the bus as the driver drove along the inner lane of the freeway.
The bus then hit a traffic island separating the freeway’s westbound lane and eastbound lanes before running into the guard rail along the outer lane.
Photo: CNA
The drivers of other vehicles pulled over and attempted to put out the flames with fire extinguishers, but the fire had grown too large for them to put out, the Central News Agency reported.
Thirteen firefighting vehicles and 30 firefighters were sent to the scene, but the bus was an inferno by the time they arrived.
“There was not enough time for them to escape,” Taoyuan Fire Department chief Lai Chi-chong (賴志忠) told reporters.
Photo: CNA
Firefighters and accident investigators who examined the charred remains of the bus said the passengers appeared to have tried to move to the back of the bus so they could leave through the emergency exit on the right side of the vehicle.
The Directorate-General of Highways (DGH) said that the bus’ main door and its emergency exit appeared to have been blocked by the guard rail, which probably explained why the doors were not opened.
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) quoted an unnamed eyewitness as saying passengers were pounding on the bus windows for help as the driver swerved sharply before the crash.
Photo courtesy of the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation
DGH records show that the bus left its manufacturer in May 2010 and passed every required inspection at the vehicle supervision office.
The records also show that Su obtained his license to drive large passenger vehicles in 1996 and had no record of driving while intoxicated.
The tour bus company that owned the bus has four others of the same model and the DGH said it has asked the firm to suspend use of the four immediately.
The agency said those four buses, along with similar models owned by other tour bus firms, would be recalled and be inspected by technical specialists from the manufacturer.
Passenger buses must be equipped with at least three emergency hammers to break the windows and have two fire extinguishers, the DGH said, and buses with a capacity for 32 to 47 passengers must also have five emergency exits.
DGH records show that there have been 37 bus fires since 2006, but yesterday’s was the first one in which the vehicle was completely destroyed and where there were so many casualties.
The Tourism Bureau said the Chinese travel agency that put together the tour group and the Taiwanese travel agency that arranged the tour had bought insurance policies for each member of the group, while the bus company also has insurance covering its passengers.
There have been a total of 98 accidents involving Chinese tourists since 2008, in which 90 people were killed and 390 injured.
Of those accidents, 38 involved tour buses, accounting for 25 deaths and 273 injuries.
Yesterday’s fire was the deadliest incident involving Chinese tourists since a tour bus crash in 2010 killed 19.
Additional reporting by CNA and AP
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