Kurnool bus fire: 234 smartphones in luggage cabin likely intensified blaze

A day after a speeding bus between Hyderabad and Bengaluru caught fire on the national highway near Chinnatekur village in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh in the early hours of Friday (October 24), resulting in death of at least 20 people, a chilling question has come to haunt the authorities as well as public – how did hundreds of smartphones end up in a passenger vehicle’s luggage cabin? They reportedly exploded to fuel the blaze, causing the loss of lives and injuring several others.

Investigators looking into the tragedy believe that the mobile phones – 234 of them – intensified the fire that started after the Vemuri Kaveri Travels bus hit a motorcycle, which got stuck underneath the giant vehicle and got dragged for some metres, causing sparks that ignited the two-wheeler’s leaking fuel from its tank, which got uncorked in the impact.

Also read: Kurnool Bus Fire: Two drivers booked for negligence, overspeeding

The flames from below then reached the luggage section, where a parcel containing the devices was stored, and the heat caused their lithium batteries to explode, intensifying the fire that then engulfed the passenger compartment in no time. Forensic teams suspect that these battery-run devices might have been one of the major factors that exacerbated the situation. Most of the passengers who perished in the inferno were travelling in the bus’s front section.

Mobile phone parcel on passenger bus

The parcel containing the mobile phones was allegedly en route to Flipkart’s warehouse in Bengaluru, from where they would be delivered to customers. The consignment, worth around Rs 46 lakh, belonged to Manganath, a Hyderabad-based businessman. Police were trying to track him.

Also read: What led to Kurnool bus blaze? Here is the official version

Eyewitnesses told investigators that they heard multiple explosions inside the bus as the fire spread, believed to be the phone batteries that burst one after another. Why would cargo items be transported in a passenger vehicle? It brings to the fore how passenger vehicles are being used for transporting things other than personal luggage.

Bus's AC batteries also burst

The matter didn’t end there. Andhra Pradesh Fire Services Director P Venkataramana said the batteries powering the bus’s air-conditioning system also exploded in the heat. He added that the fire was so serious that the aluminium sheets on the vehicle’s floor melted.

Also read: Kurnool bus fire: Why this stretch of NH-44 is a death trap

Officials probing the site found human bones and ashes lying below the melted metal floor, a grim testament to the tragedy.

(This article was first published in The Federal Andhra Pradesh)