It’s been a couple of years since we had a TransJakarta bus spontaneously combust while carrying passengers in the capital, but the safety streak was unfortunately broken yesterday evening when one bus burst into flames in Sawah Besar, Central Jakarta.
According to reports, the bus caught fire at around 8:30 pm while going past the front of the Starbucks on Pasar Baru. Luckily, all of the passengers were evacuated before the bus was completely engulfed in flames.
“Firetrucks were able to arrive at 8:54 pm. We were blocked by traffic jams, so the fire fighters took a long time to reach the scene. But the fire was extinguished by 9:15 pm,” Central Jakarta Fire Department Chief Hardisiswan told Kompas yesterday.
Photos of the aftermath show that only the metal frame of the bus remained while everything else was turned to ash.
“For the cause, we cannot yet determine. We are still investigating. It’s the same with the financial loss, we haven’t counted it,” Hardisiswan said.
Authorities also have not revealed the manufacturer of the bus.
The last TransJakarta bus to spontaneously combust did so in December 2016, but there were numerous similar incidents before that in the preceding years — mostly due to electrical failures. All of the combusting buses had one thing in common: they were all made by Chinese manufacturers.
Under former governor Basuki “BTP” Tjahaja Purnama’s administration, many of the Chinese-manufactured buses were replaced with buses from Europe, none of which have burst into flames while in service.
There have been no recorded casualties due to any of the TransJakarta bus combusting incidents of previous years — almost as if its employees are well trained to evacuate passengers in anticipation of the inevitable.
