Wedding clothes, toys, groceries and other valuable
belongings — all gone within seconds.
Stranded passengers of a bus which caught fire on the N1
north near William Nicol Drive in Johannesburg early on Wednesday morning
watched as firefighters removed their damaged luggage from the vehicle's burnt
trailer.
The passengers and crew managed to escape through the
windows just as the bus became engulfed in flames, said emergency services.
With traffic heavily backed up on the major highway, passengers were sitting on
the side of the road.
Some were barefoot, with bandages around their legs, hiding
scars that nearly claimed their lives. A passenger, Albert Maphosa, said they
heard a “very loud sound” and thought that a tyre had burst.
“The driver tried his best to make the bus stop. We broke
the windows and got out from there,” Maphosa said. On the bus were pregnant
women, small children and elderly people, en route from Cape Town to Zimbabwe.
“When we were outside, we realised that the bus was
burning. We tried our best to rescue the people through windows. “We lost all
of our belongings, everything is gone.”
The fire was extinguished by emergency services. A few 9kg
gas canisters stood a few metres from the bus. The road was littered with
shoes, socks and toys. As emergency services removed the passengers' half-burnt
bags from the trailer, bottles of cooking oil, small bottles of Coca-Cola and
some scorched shorts fell out.
For Marieta Kariwa, it was a sad sight: two years of
savings destroyed in seconds.
Kariwa works in Cape Town and was making her way back home
to Zimbabwe to visit her three children for Christmas. In addition to money for
basics, she had been saving to buy them Christmas clothes and toys.
“When the bus started catching fire, they (fellow
passengers) took me through the window. I feared for my life and got out.
“When I got outside, I realised that I left my jacket
behind. It had my passport and R10,000 in it. I don’t have my jacket or
anything. I have nothing. My kids' clothing, their toys and all of our
Christmas stuff gone,” a weeping Kariwa said.
She said she would have to return to Cape Town to work to
earn more money.
“I want to go back and work for my children because they
don’t have nothing now. I am a single mother of three, because their father
passed away.”
Their impending disappointment weighed on her: “I don’t
want to tell them that something happened, because I was supposed to arrive at
home around the evening.”
A Good Samaritan, Cindy Wisser, ran from car to car to
collect water for the stranded passengers. “We really just need to help the
people, because it’s really hot. They have been sitting here for how long, with
the flames and fumes,” she said. Wisser had collected more than 50 bottles of
water to give to the stranded passengers when TimesLIVE was there.
Nyarai Zvikaramba said she was travelling with bags from
customers. “Our business is to transport goods for people living in Cape Town.
They ask us to take their stuff to their families back in Zimbabwe.
“Most of the bags had Christmas groceries. “I was very
scared and panicked. I just jumped through the window and then I thought about
the kids in the bus. I then ran back and helped the kids.
“There were pregnant ladies in the bus too and some of them
fainted.” Times
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