North Callaway school bus catches fire

A North Callaway school bus caught fire Tuesday morning at the district’s bus barn.

According to North Callaway R-1 School District Superintendent Bryan Thomsen, a mechanic pulled the bus around to the shop when it appears the engine caught fire.

The mechanic attempted to put the fire out with the extinguisher on the bus but the fire continued to get bigger.

The mechanic called the fire department and moved two nearby buses away from the one on fire.

Thompson said after calling the fire department, the district notified the parents along the affected route to let them know the bus would be late. The district used a spare bus to pick up the students.

Thompson said no one was injured during this fire. He said the bus is a 2006 Freightliner model.

ABC 17 News took a look at numbers regarding bus fires and found a study published by the U.S. Department of Transportation that looked at bus fires from 2004 to 2013.

According to the study, the school bus population — the number of buses on the road — “stays relatively consistent, peaking at ages 1, 9, 10, and 12. The number of fire records begins to climb at age 4 and is at its highest at age 9. The number of school bus fires and the ratio of school bus fires to vehicle population are highest for school buses between the ages of 4 and 11.”

The study also broke down how many bus fires happened in that ’04 to ’13 span by major manufacturer. The study said of Freightliner’s 78,805 buses in that nine year span, 168 were involved in fires, making about 0.2% the bus population.