A HYUNDAI car’s brakes caught fire on Nigang West Road on Thursday. Lacking fire extinguishing equipment, the car’s owner beat at the flames with clothes, but the blaze only intensified. A bus driver stopped and put out the fire with a fire extinguisher at the critical moment, the Shenzhen Evening News reported.

“I saw him fanning the flames with his clothes, trying to extinguish the fire, but not only could this not put out the fire, but it might aggravate it,” said Dong Mingbo, the bus driver who helped stamp out the blaze. Dong is a bus driver with the Kengzi bus fleet of Shenzhen Eastern Bus Co. Ltd.

At about 7 p.m. Thursday, Dong was passing on Nigang West Road in Luohu District when he saw a car emitting smoke in the distance. As he got closer, he found that the car had caught fire.

After asking passengers for their consent, Dong immediately got off the bus with a fire extinguisher to put out the fire, which was quickly brought under control in less than three minutes.

The car’s owner expressed gratitude to Dong afterwards and said he was thrown into a panic at the time. He said without Dong’s help, the flames would have spread to the engine if he had kept fanning the flames with clothes.

In order to prevent the vehicle from reignition, Dong also helped the driver carry out a simple inspection under the hood. After confirming that there was no risk of reignition, Dong got back on the bus and left the scene.

It is not the first time that a bus driver has offered a helping hand in putting out a vehicle fire. On May 22, a driver on line M361 with the Kengzi bus fleet named Luo Guixiang helped extinguish flames that had engulfed a Mercedes-Benz on Niueling Road in Longhua District before the fire had a chance to spread.

According to the person in charge of the Kengzi bus fleet, drivers are advised to turn to passing buses for help if a fire breaks out, as basically all on-duty bus drivers have experience dealing with emergencies.

Meanwhile, each bus is equipped with six four-kilogram fire extinguishers, which is equivalent to a small fire truck. The amount of fire extinguishers on the bus can extinguish a medium-sized fire in its initial stage.

The person added that timely response to a fire, even if the fire cannot be extinguished, can help control the fire and keep the amount of damage within a minimum range while waiting for fire trucks to arrive.

(Zhang Yu)