School bus catches fire in Montreal, 5 children inside unharmed | CBC News
In Montreal, five children and their bus driver are unharmed after their electric school bus caught fire on Tuesday morning.
The incident happened near the intersection of Jean-Talon Street West and Victoria Avenue in the city’s Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood.
In a statement to CBC News, the Centre de services scolaire de Montréal (CSSDM), the province’s largest school service centre, confirmed it was their bus that went up in flames.
The school service centre told CBC News the driver parked the bus and got himself and the elementary school students off it after noticing an unusual odour.
A separate bus came by shortly after to get pick up the children.
The cause of the fire is not currently known.
”Parents were informed of the situation,” reads the statement from the CSSDM.
”As per our contracts, the transportation company’s vehicles are subject to strict mechanical verification requirements, and those verifications are recent. We remain in close communication with the company in order to find out the cause of this incident.”
According to the Montreal fire department, multiple 911 calls were placed around 8 a.m., after the electric school bus went up in flames.
A spokesperson for the fire department says the driver of the bus had just turned off the heating system and noticed smoke rising from the vents before evacuating the vehicle.
The fire service also says the battery system of the electric bus was not related to the fire, and was not affected by the blaze.
It took four firefighters to put out the blaze.