When a school bus fires in Thailand, the excursion turns tragic

Bangkok, Thailand – A devastating fire destroyed a Thai bus carrying 44 children and teachers on a school trip on Tuesday, leaving up to 25 feared dead.

Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said there were fatalities and expressed condolences to the families of the victims.

The bus was one of three buses carrying children – from kindergarten age to about 13 or 14 years old – from Wat Khao Phraya Sangkharam school in northern Uthai Thani province.

Transport Minister Suriya Juangroongruangkit said the number of deaths was not clear but 25 people were missing after the fire.

“Initial reports said there were 44 people on board, 38 students and six teachers. As far as we know now, three teachers and 16 students have dropped out,” he told reporters.

“We are not yet clear about those who are still missing.”

The disaster began when a tire burst on a highway in a northern suburb of Bangkok around 12:30 p.m. (0530 GMT), causing the bus to crash into a barrier and burst into flames, rescuers said.

Video footage from the scene showed flames engulfing the bus as it burned under an overpass, sending huge clouds of thick black smoke billowing into the sky.

Rescue workers set up shields to shield firefighters and investigators as they began removing bodies from the charred rubble.

“Some of the bodies we rescued were very, very small. They must have been very young,” Piyalak Thinkaew, who led the search, told reporters at the scene, adding that the fire started at the front of the bus.

“The children’s instinct was to flee to the back so the bodies were there,” he said.

The bodies were so badly charred that it was difficult to identify them, he said.

Some of the escaped children suffered horrific burns to their faces, mouths and eyes, doctors treating them told local media.

Poor road safety

“I learned about the fire in a bus carrying students from Uthai Thani, which resulted 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 motorcycle taxi driver, heard the noise of the incident from a kilometer away.

“There was smoke everywhere. Poor children, I heard they were very small,” he told Agence France Presse (AFP).

“I was hoping that God would be merciful so that the rain would put out the fire and the children would survive.”

The fire was extinguished, 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 world’s worst road safety records, with unsafe vehicles and poor driving contributing to the high annual death toll.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 20,000 people die on the kingdom’s roads every year – an average of more than 50 per day.

According to the WHO, economic losses from traffic deaths and injuries amounted to around $15.5 billion in 2022 – more than three percent of GDP.