It was a little before noon this Thursday that several people noticed the column of black smoke which seemed to come from the commercial area of Saint-Maximin and which was visible several kilometers around.
It was a bus from the Creil Sud Oise agglomeration (ACSO), providing line A, between Montataire and Saint-Maximin via Creil, which suddenly burst into flames on rue des Montagnards, between the Décathlon store and the gas station of Cora, just after restarting from a stop on the line.
A spectacular incident but which caused no injuries, the driver having managed to get the four passengers on board off to safety.
The bus will be examined to discover the origin of the fire.
“The driver saw smoke coming from the rear right side of the bus just after leaving the stop,” says Philippe Lequimme, director of the ACSO network.
He stopped and immediately brought the four passengers to safety.
He tried to put out the fire with his fire extinguisher but it was already too big, he called the fire brigade.
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“The tires made a huge noise when they burst”
The emergency services, whose barracks are very close, arrived very quickly on the scene and managed to bring the disaster under control while access to this portion of rue des Montagnards was cut off to traffic by the gendarmes and the municipal police of Saint-Maximin.
“The tires made a huge noise when they burst,” said a woman who witnessed the conflagration.
And despite this rapid intervention, it was an almost entirely charred bus carcass which was evacuated an hour later by the breakdown service chartered by the network operator.
“The fire started on the right side and not the left side, where the tank is located since it is a diesel vehicle,” explains the network director.
This bus will be examined because this type of incident is very rare.
All our vehicles are checked every six months and the last check was only in January.
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