The University of Western Ontario men’s and women’s volleyball teams escaped harm Sunday after fire erupted at the rear of their charter bus and tore through it.
Patrick Johnston, a 23-year-old Mustangs player, says the bus — bedecked in UWO decals — was heading toward London from Toronto along the Hwy. 401 when fire inexplicably broke out at the back end.
The driver pulled over and the players, fresh off games at the University of Toronto, got out before flames ripped through the bus — which Johnston
figures is “a write-off.”
“It’s toast,” he said. “All (our) jerseys and shoes are wrecked. (But) we’re fine. We’re all fine.”
The teams were put on another bus and were pulling into London at just after 9:30 p.m. Sunday.
Witnesses were stunned by the spectacle of the fiery bus. Ryan Venables, a former police officer now studying law at Western, says he and his wife “gasped” as the flames rose higher than the bus itself.
“Once you got within about 100 metres of it, you could see the reflection of the flames off the asphalt,” he said. “I’ve seen that before (as a police officer). I wasn’t really expecting to see it now.”
It was about 8 p.m. when the bus driver noticed smoke coming from the back end, Oxford OPP say. He pulled the bus onto the shoulder near the Cami automotive plant outside Ingersoll and got the passengers out.
“He did what he was supposed to do,” OPP Const. Stacey Culbert said of the driver. “He pulled over, and everyone got off safely.”
South-West Oxford firefighters battled the blaze. Oxford paramedics took the driver to Ingersoll hospital for treatment.
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