Passenger might have sparked fire in deadly bus accident

Shanghai Daily, July 25, 2011

A bus catches fire on a highway joining Beijing and Zhuhai on July 22, 2011.

The deadly fire that claimed 41 lives on a long-distance bus in the central Henan Province last Friday was probably ignited by flammables illegally taken onboard by a passenger, according to its driver.

"I keep thinking that one of the passengers took something flammable on to the bus," Zou Jianzhou, 47, told the China News Service yesterday.

The double-decker bus was on its way from the city of Weihai in east China's Shandong Province to Changsha, the capital of central China's Hunan Province, when it caught fire at 4am.

A total of 47 people were on board when flames engulfed the coach on the Beijing-Zhuhai Expressway, near the city of Xinyang in Henan.

Forty-one died and the remaining six were injured in the deadliest accident of its kind in years.

Work safety officials in Henan also believe that one or more passengers may have had flammable or explosive materials in their luggage.

Zou speculated a passenger might have stored the flammable item at the rear of the vehicle, near the engine.

"Within a second, the fire swept from the back up to the driver's seat," he said.

Zou suffered 10 percent burns to his face, arms and back, but is in stable condition.

Although the cause of the blaze is still being investigated, lax safety supervision might be to blame, as the bus was overloaded, according to preliminary investigations.

The bus was designed to carry 35 passengers, but 47 people were on board.

When asked whether the bus overloaded, Zou said he had "no idea."

A spokesman for an investigative team in Weihai said the bus was not carrying any passengers when it left a local long-distance bus station at 10 am on Thursday.

The bus station is responsible for safety checks.

GPS data showed it made at least five stops in Shandong's cities of Weihai, Yantai and Jining. This suggests the bus picked up passengers along the way, and checks are unlikely to have taken place.

Officials also said it did not appear that the bus had been stopped for safety checks during its 1,000-km journey.

One of the injured is still in critical condition in hospital, while the other five are reported to be stable.