Teenagers in lucky escape from bus blaze

A BUSLOAD of teenagers bound for Irish college escaped a fire that gutted the coach they were travelling in and destroyed their belongings at Innishannon, Co Cork, yesterday.

The students had just left Cork city and were travelling in convoy to Cape Clear for a three-week gaeltacht course when the fire broke out.

Units of the fire brigade from Bandon, Kinsale and Cork responded to the emergency call at 3pm but although the fire was extinguished in a short period of time only the shell of the vehicle remained.

Some breathing apparatus was used for those evacuated from the bus, according to the fire service’s incident report, although no one was injured.

Last night Coláiste Chiarain, on Cape Clear, said that none of the students that were due to start the course yesterday had arrived on the island.

However, it said that it did not have any further information until it spoke with the college’s parent company Gaelachas Teo.

A spokesman for gardaí at Bandon sympathised with the teenagers who lost belongings in the blaze.

He said: “The matter is under investigation at the moment so we cannot release any details at this stage.

“There were children on the bus at the time but they were disembarked in time, but obviously it was not nice for them. It is very tough on them that they lost all their stuff.”

The main N71 was closed for more than half an hour, causing massive tail-backs in both directions.

Gardaí facilitated limited traffic flow for the remainder of rush-hour but the route was not fully opened until later in the evening.