School bus catches fire in Thailand, 25 feared dead

BANGKOK: A devastating fire tore through a Thai bus carrying 44 students and teachers on a school trip Tuesday (Oct 1), officials said, with up to 25 feared dead.
The bus was one of three carrying children – ranging from kindergarten age to around 13 or 14 years old – from Wat Khao Phraya Sangkharam school in the northern province of Uthai Thani.
Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said there were fatalities and offered condolences to the victims’ families. In a Facebook post on Tuesday evening, the prime minister also said that the government would cover medical expenses and provide compensation to the families of the deceased.
Transport Minister Suriya Juangroongruangkit said the number of dead was not clear but 25 people were unaccounted for after the blaze.
“Initial reports said there are 44 on board, 38 students and six teachers. As far as we know now, three teachers and 16 students got out,” he told reporters.
“For those still missing, we are not clear yet.”
The bus caught fire in Pathum Thani province, on the outskirts of the capital Bangkok.
According to the Bangkok Post, the incident happened at 12.30pm near the Zeer Rangsit shopping mall, not far from Bangkok’s Don Mueang Airport.
When CNA arrived on the scene at 5pm, hundreds of emergency personnel remained on site. Police had taped off the immediate crash area and were seen poring over the charred out vehicle, taking photos of the bus’ exterior and interior.
The disaster began when a tyre burst on a highway, sending the bus crashing into a barrier and bursting into flames, rescuers said.
Video footage from the scene showed flames engulfing the bus as it burned under an overpass, huge clouds of dense black smoke billowing into the sky.
Rescue workers put up screens to shield firefighters and investigators as they began recovering bodies from the charred wreckage.
The fire started at the front of the bus, Piyalak Thinkaew, who is leading the search, told reporters at the scene.
“The kids’ instinct was to escape to the back so the bodies were there,” he said, adding that it was hard to identify the bodies.
Some of the children who escaped suffered horrific burns to their faces, mouths and eyes, doctors treating them told local media.
“I have learned of the fire on a bus carrying students from Uthai Thani … resulting in deaths and injuries,” Paetongtarn wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
“As a mother, I would like to express my deepest condolences to the families of the injured and deceased.”
Meechai Sa-ard, a motorbike taxi driver, heard the noise of the incident from a kilometre away.
“There was smoke everywhere. Poor children, I heard they were very little,” he told AFP.
“I was hoping that god would be kind so that the rain could put the fire out and the kids would survive.”
The blaze has been put out but rescuers had to wait for the bus to cool down before searching it for bodies, a rescue worker said.
Thailand has one of the worst road safety records in the world, with unsafe vehicles and poor driving contributing to the high annual death toll.
Around 20,000 people are killed every year on the kingdom’s roads, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) – more than 50 a day on average.
The economic losses caused by traffic deaths and injuries amounted to around US$15.5 billion in 2022 – more than 3 per cent of GDP – the WHO says.