21 December,2009 08:04 AM IST | | MiD DAY Correspondent
Low-floor DTC bus catches fire
It seems low-floor bus has become synonymous with accidents. It was another bad day for the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) on Saturday, with its top-of-the-line bus catching fire, again.
The bus got stalled in Uttam Nagar area of west Delhi at around 10.24 pm after smoke started emanating from its real wheels.
No one was injured in the incident.
About 21 passengers seated in the low floor bus plying on route 753 plyingu00a0-- Uttam Nagar to Mori gateu00a0-- noticed smoke coming out of the rear wheels near Delhi Cantonment.
The driver evacuated the bus safely. "As soon as I came to know about the smoke, I brought the bus to a halt," said the driver Ram Prasad Meena.u00a0
Mohan Singh, who was in the bus, can't stop thanking God for giving him a new lease of life.u00a0 "We noticed smoke coming out of the rear wheels. As the back door of the bus was jammed, it could not be opened. This led to panic but we managed to escape with the help of the driver," Singh, a resident of west Delhi.
DTC, however, denied that the bus had caught fire. "No such incident took place on Saturday. Maybe there was some minor accident or a breakdown," said RK Kasana, public relations officer and chief general manager of DTC.
Inquiry report
After the incident the bus was driven to Hari Nagar depot. An official from the depot, on conditions of anonymity, said they had received a call from the driver of the bus. Preliminary enquiry revealed that the smoke was a result of the friction between the brake shoe and the wheel drums.
| In the line of fire |
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>>This is now the seventh such incident in the low floor DTC buses in the last three weeks. Earlier on December 12, two low floor buses of DTC caught fire in two separate incidents. |
