34 nursery kids escape death in Fujairah school-bus blaze

Thirty-four nursery children miraculously escaped death after their bus driver and a female teacher hurriedly evicted them just before it caught fire in the middle of the road in Fujairah, a newspaper reported on Monday.

The bus was heading for the nursery on Sunday morning when the driver was alerted by other motorists and pedestrians on the road that smoke is billowing from the rear of their vehicle, the Arabic language daily Emarat Al Youm said.

The driver said he had seen the smoke but that he thought it was coming from another car before he was warned by the others that it was in his own bus.

He immediately stopped the bus and started to quickly evict the children out of the bus with the help of the female teacher who was accompanying them.

Just after the kids were taken away to a safe place, the bus caught fire, prompting the driver to call the civil defence after he failed to put it out with the bus extinguisher.

“It is a new bus and this accident was the first of its kind in the eastern region. Authorities are investigating the accident to determine its causes,” the paper said, quoting Mohammed Suhail Saeed, director of the school transport at the department of transport in the eastern coast.

Emarat Al Youm ran a brief YouTube film showing the bus still on fire before it was brought under control by the civil defence.
 

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