JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A school bus went up in flames on I-10 eastbound Wednesday morning, sending a cloud of smoke hovering over the highway near Lane and Cassat avenues and causing a major backup.
The 63-year-old driver was not hurt and no students were on board at the time, according to Duval County Public Schools.
Capt. Eric Prosswimmer with the Jacksonville Fire Rescue Department described the unusual way the fire ignited on the bus.
The school bus driver could not avoid a mattress that was lying on the interstate and did not want to swerve to cause a crash, so she ran over the mattress -- which got caught under the bus.
“When you drag something, you are creating friction,” Prosswimmer said. “It got caught by the fuel cell underneath. The friction was hot enough it ignited. In this business, when you think you have seen it all, you are going to see something else.”
The Florida Highway Patrol said the bus driver managed to pull off in the right lane and get off the bus before flames engulfed it.
“First of all, you are thankful that there weren’t a bunch of kids on the bus,” Prosswimmer said. “That is a concern of ours. Life safety is our first and foremost every time.”
Prosswimmer said if a driver ends up running over debris that they can’t avoid, there are a few things they should do immediately.
“You want to make sure that you listen,” he said. “Are you dragging it? Is it caught underneath? Has it dislodged something underneath one of your fuel lines or something like that?”
What made the situation tricky Wednesday was that it happened on a highway where it is dangerous to pull over.
If a driver is hauling something on top of their car, they should make sure it is tied down and secured the best they can. But there is always the possibility of it unlinking and flying off.
“That is a catch-22,” Prosswimmer said. “Because if you are driving down the road and you have a mattress and you know it has flown off, yes, you know it has flown off, but is it safe for you to go back and recover it to get it out of the way?”
The fire was reported around 8:30 a.m. and by 9:45 a.m., the fire was out and all lanes of I-10 eastbound were open again.