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| In Lymington bus station
one afternoon, a cigarette in one hand and
filling the radiator of a bus from a watering
can in the other, a passenger reported me
for putting petrol in the bus while smoking.
This gave everyone a laugh at the time but
vehicle fires can be serious. And this was
one of the things we were supposed to cope
with, without any training. |
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| Stuck
in the traffic that used to clog Lance's Hill
in the morning rush hour, smoke started pouring
from a car just in front of us. I grabbed
the extinguishers from under the stairs and
from the driver's cab. The engine compartment
was well alight and the interior was beginning
to burn. As other buses went by the crews
gave me their extinguishers and I stayed until
the fire brigade arrived. When I reached the
bus station and reported the incident I was
in trouble for not taking the car driver's
name and address so they could be sent the
bill. |
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| One car driver in The Avenue
had a small fire. I put it out and a passing
motorist disconnected the battery. The driver
wanted to know if it was possible to drive
the car. Another driver I came across in Shirley,
desperately pouring bowls of water over the
bonnet of his car, wasn't going to get very
far either. |
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| At the bus stop at Stag
Gates, a driver and I were sitting on the
edge of the rear platform while the front
of the bus quietly got on with the business
of being hidden by clouds of smoke. A woman
pushed between us and boarded the bus. Meanwhile,
a fire engine raced past in the opposite direction.
It eventually returned but by this time a
couple of fitters had arrived with fire extinguishers.
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| I was on a bus as a passenger
one evening when a car driver spotted that
the bus was on fire. An off duty driver and
I got the few other passengers off. The rear
engined Bristol RE was well alight by the
time we got to the side flaps to turn off
the power and fuel. With the vehicle full
of thick black smoke and flames round the
sides and rear, I found the driver of the
bus was still inside carefully packing up
his ticket machine and paperwork. |
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| One day, as I pulled away
from Vincents Walk, a driver jumped onto the
platform to hitch a ride to the canteen in
Poundtree Road. As he got off I went inside
to collect fares and he threw the match he
had just used to light a cigarette into the
used ticket box. Flames shot up the back of
the bus and I rang the bell several times.
The driver looked round, I pointed to the
flames but he carried on to the next bus stop.
I dashed round to the cab to get his extinguisher
and put the fire out. When I asked him why
he had not stopped straight away, he said
that the correct signal for an emergency was
three bells, not four! |
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