The driver of a bus that erupted in flames in the Chinese city of Yibin on Monday afternoon stayed aboard the blazing vehicle and smashed a window with a safety hammer to help passengers escape, the Yibin Municipal Government said in a statement yesterday.
Driver Xiao Kunming (肖坤明) is being treated at a hospital for severe injuries he suffered by staying on the bus and is unable to give interviews, according to statements issued on microblogging site Sina Weibo by the Yibin municipal press office.
The bus blast and subsequent fire in Sichuan Province killed the man suspected of causing the blaze and injured 77 people, 12 of whom are in intensive care at a hospital, state-run media said yesterday.
Photo: Reuters
The China Daily newspaper named the dead arson suspect as Yu Yuehai (余躍海), but gave no details about him other than his age, 51.
The Sichuan Public Security Bureau said on its Weibo account that Yu was Han Chinese, but made no speculations about why he might have started a fire, while the Yibin City Government said that following a preliminary investigation, police suspect he set the fire deliberately.
However, the Apple Daily in Hong Kong reported that some Yibin residents — whom it did not identify by name — were questioning whether the attack was arson.
The residents complained that local buses were poorly maintained and often smelled of gasoline, adding that another bus had burned on April 15, injuring seven passengers, the independent paper reported.
Photographs of Monday’s blaze carried by state media showed the bus on the side of a road with some of its windows shattered and the floor strewn with bags, plastic bottles and other items. The images also showed several injured passengers, including a child with severe burns, being carried to hospitals.
The high injury toll included rescuers who were harmed in responding to the blaze, in addition to the 50 passengers who were on the bus when the fire erupted at 4:50pm.
So many people were injured that the city’s medical facilities are in urgent need of blood, particularly types O and A, the press office said on Weibo. Residents have been flocking to centers to give blood and four additional blood donation sites were opened yesterday morning, the office added.
The office said in separate postings that someone had deliberately started a fire near one of the bus’ middle doors. Upon noticing the flames, Xiao used a fire extinguisher to try and extinguish them, but after failing to do so, broke a window with a safety hammer to helped passengers to safety.
Xiao’s actions were captured by the bus’ camera system and his heroics come as international attention is focused on transportation personnel’s responsibilities during deadly incidents after crew members abandoned passengers aboard a capsizing South Korean ferry last month.
South Korean authorities have been investigating whether the crew members made sufficient effort to evacuate hundreds of passengers, mostly high-school students, who were told by the ferry’s captain to stay in their cabins as the vessel slowly turned over and sank.
Yesterday, divers found another body trapped in the sunken Sewol the search for more than two dozen missing passengers resumed after strong winds and waves halted the effort for three days.
Searchers have found 276 bodies and 28 passengers remain missing.
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