Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

A PTSC bus trans­port­ing school­child­ren in To­ba­go caught fire yes­ter­day morn­ing.Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the bus left Char­lot­teville short­ly af­ter 8 am and on reach­ing Bark Hill, be­tween Flagstaff and Turpin Bend, the fire broke out.As­sis­tant di­vi­sion­al fire of­fi­cer in To­ba­go David Thomas told the T&T Guardian the dri­ver was alert­ed to a fire in the en­gine com­part­ment at the back of the bus.

All pas­sen­gers es­caped with­out in­jury. The fire rapid­ly spread and the bus was de­stroyed. Thomas said the fire was so in­tense that it af­fect­ed a quar­ter-acre of land near­by.Among the pas­sen­gers on board were school chil­dren who were due to sit CSEC ex­am­i­na­tions yes­ter­day.This is the lat­est in­ci­dent in­volv­ing a PTSC bus in To­ba­go.

Last year the brakes on a bus mal­func­tioned while it was on its way from Bloody Bay to Rox­bor­ough while an­oth­er bus al­most plunged over a cliff at Turpin Bend, Char­lot­teville, when it en­coun­tered me­chan­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties. PTSC dri­vers in To­ba­go have staged sev­er­al protests high­light­ing the de­plorable con­di­tion of bus­es they are made to dri­ve on a dai­ly ba­sis.In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the in­ci­dent are con­tin­u­ing.