An NJ Transit bus on its way to Manhattan caught fire on the New Jersey Turnpike on Thursday morning, sending flames soaring into the sky and snarling traffic on the highway.
No one was injured in the incident, NJ.com reported. All 49 passengers and the driver evacuated the bus before flames engulfed it.
The initial accident was caused by a tire blowout, WABC reported. The passengers and driver evacuated after the blowout and before the inferno; they were transferred to the next bus that arrived.
The initial bus was traveling on route 113 from Plainfield, N.J., to Port Authority Bus Terminal, according to WCBS. It departed Plainfield at 5:06 a.m. and was scheduled to arrive at 6:13 a.m.
Instead, it suffered the tire blowout on the New Jersey Turnpike’s eastern spur, near Exit 15X in Secaucus, and the fire erupted just before 6 a.m.
The blaze resulted in significant delays on the turnpike, as authorities eventually shut down all of the northbound lanes to deal with the burning bus, WABC reported. One southbound lane was also briefly closed.
A fiery NJ Transit bus hadn’t snarled traffic since August 2022, when a small blaze briefly stopped all traffic inside the Lincoln Tunnel. Unlike the bus that was engulfed on Thursday, that bus remained intact and emerged from the tunnel.
In April 2022, several buses were set on fire in a North Bergen parking lot, destroying five buses and damaging two others. Six people were later arrested for starting that blaze.
