GREENVILLE, N.C. - When you send your child to school on a bus, the last thing you would expect to have to worry about is their safety.
But after another bus fire in our state this week in charlotte 9 On Your Side wanted to know: Are NC buses safe to ride in?
This is at least the sixth bus fire over the past two years.
Just last year, we did an in-depth investigation into these bus fires and found 4 of them were on Freightliner, Thomas built busses that were more than 10 years old.
And all four were caused by an electrical wiring problem in the engine compartment.
Well, it turns out the bus that caught on fire in charlotte was again the same type of bus, but officials believe this time it may have started near the heater instead of wiring.
Section Chief of Transportation for North Carolina schools, Derek Graham says, either way, their not taking any chances.
"We'll be looking for any recommendations that they have for our staff across the state and the 100 school bus garages and anything that we need to be on the look out for, anything we need to correct if there are particular circumstances related to this crash that there is even the slightest possibility it can be repeated we want to be all over that,” said Graham.
He says there are tons of these busses across the state.
But if they're catching on fire, should they be taken out of circulation?
"We don't have any reason to believe that those buses need to be taken off. Again, the circumstances are completely different, in fact just today we sent out communication to the bus garages, alerting them to the fact we did have this fire and just reminding them of several things they can look at when they're doing inspections every 30 days,” Graham said.
We also asked if these bus fires are becoming an increasing problem.
"I don't have any data to say that it's anything that's on the rise, at this point the one in charlotte appears to be an isolated incident and so were planning to learn as much about that, get as much information out as we can for the inspectors that are looking at theses buses and making sure they're aware of the circumstances,” he said.
In the end, the bottom line is: Are North Carolina buses safe?
"Yes absolutely, the safest way to get to and from school is on the school buses.” Graham said.
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