A Public Danger !

The timing could not have been worse.   It was 5-20 on a Friday afternoon and the Sydney commute was at its peak.   The maximum flow of cars, buses and trains was taking the citizens of Sydney across the Sydney Harbour bridge when a flicker of flame from his engine bay at the rear of his  bus alerted the driver to make an emergency stop.

The traffic  controllers watching their computer screens in the bridge control room were horrified at what happened next.   Within seconds the entire engine bay was a mass of fire with plumes of flame reaching high into the sky and great columns of black, oily smoke enveloping other traffic.  Immediately all traffic control signals turned to red - and the bridge became a giant parking lot !  All this was watched live on the television channels as the story was treated as  breaking news .

That alert driver acted promptly and began to evacuate his passengers.  Fortunately, there were only seven people riding in that bus, but such was the intensity and speed of the fire that two passengers and the driver needed to be taken to hospital by attending paramedics to be be treated for smoke inhalation.   Had that bus been packed with passengers in every seat and the usual number of strap hanging standing people the casualty outcome would have been horrific.

This news story filled television screens for the next hour or so.  Eventually a heavy vehicle towed the burned out bus carcass off the bridge and the traffic flow resumed, but the delay had a cumulative effect and most drivers were seriously delayed.

The inevitable follow-up of what happened to this twenty-year old bus is causing consternation to the travelling public.   It seems that similar bus fires are common - and it is a fact that this incident was the thirty-sixth similar bus fire so far this year - and we have three months of the year remaining.

It seems that we have 2,700 similar Sydney buses in service awaiting a contract to be let to have installed a fire retardant system that automatically releases a high pressure spray that snuffs out any fuel fire.   Even if that contract was let immediately, the amount of work required installing the system in a fleet of buses would probably cause a delay well into 2017.

These are the same buses that get school children to classes and run packed to the rafters in morning and afternoon peaks.   It is an ageing fleet that will shortly face the expectation that summer may deliver exceptionally hot days because of global warming.   We have no idea what caused that fire on the Sydney Harbour bridge but it is a fact that an engine fire is possible at speeds in which an orderly evacuation will deliver casualties.

The public must learn to move promptly when an evacuation is ordered, and processing that fire retardant contract needs to move to high priority !