Thailand Mourns Bus Fire Victims

TaiwanPlus News

Thailand is still reeling from a fatal bus crash and fire that killed 23 students and teachers while on a school trip. The tragedy has spurred calls for safety reforms even as the exact cause of the blaze is still under investigation.

Transcript

00:00It's a grim day at this Buddhist temple in central Thailand, as relatives gathered

00:05to remember the 23 people who perished in a violent bus fire on Tuesday.

00:11The dead were students and teachers on a school trip.

00:15The father and grandmother of nine-year-old Rutawat had held out hope he was one of those

00:21who had managed to escape.

00:23But that hope has since been crushed.

00:26And so, here they are with the rest of the bereaved.

00:53The mother of another victim tells a reporter that her child died in what, for them, should

01:10have been an especially happy day.

01:36The driver initially fled the scene, but has since turned himself in.

01:40He says the front wheel malfunctioned, sending the bus crashing into a concrete traffic

01:45barrier.

01:47That may have set off compressed natural gas canisters on board.

01:51Not unusual in a country where natural gas powers many vehicles.

01:55But this bus, it turns out, was loaded with almost twice as many canisters as allowed.

02:03For the victims' families, there's little comfort to be had.

02:07The scale of the shock already has activists calling for better safety rules, and spurred

02:13a pledge by the government to inspect all the country's natural gas-powered buses.

02:19Perhaps the start of a reckoning on Thailand's roads where 20,000 people die each year.

02:26Eason Pan, John Ventriest, and Jonathan Kaplan for Taiwan Plus.

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