Bus “explodes” and goes up in flames in Southend city centre

A bus caught fire in Southend on Wednesday night, with witnesses describing “explosions”.

The single-decker Arriva bus quickly went up in flames soon after 7:30pm, in Southend city centre.

The bus driver reportedly tried to tackle the fire at first using the onboard fire extinguisher, but was unsuccessful.

Firefighters were then called and arrived at around 7:50pm, finding the bus completely alight. The firefighters worked to put the fire out by 8:30pm.

The incident happened on Short Street, near to the Arriva Bus depot.

Former Arriva bus driver, Donna Platt, said she was not surprised that one of the buses had caught fire. She claimed: “The buses were poorly maintained when I was there two years ago. The drivers were told to carry on even when a warning light came on because they had no funding for the engineering team who worked really hard to try and keep the fleet going.”