Coach bus catches fire near Lake Forest Hospital

About 12 minutes after the bus turned around, he tweeted that it was on fire, then it exploded. All the passengers and the driver made it out safely, but there was not enough time to save luggage stored below the bus.

Route 41 was shut down southbound at Gage Road from 12:30 p.m.to 1:45 p.m., officials said.

One of the passengers, New York Times travel columnist Lucas Peterson, took to Twitter under his alter ego The Frugal Traveler to document the whole experience.

Peterson tweeted photos of the damage and emergency crew response as flames consumed the bus. “When they arrived on location it was fully involved”, says Lake Forest Fire Chief Pete Siebert.

Based on Peterson’s report, the bus was a dud from the start. He posted that the bus stopped on the shoulder of the highway a couple of times before turning around about an hour into the trip to switch buses.

One man had been using the bus to move permanently to Milwaukee and told Peterson he had lost most of his possessions, including his social security and credit cards and his birth certificate. About five minutes later tire blows and we pull over on highway 41.

Coach USA, the company that owns MegaBus, says they are fully cooperating with authorities and this investigation to figure out what caused this fire.

Megabus has had several incidents since it started its low-priced service between major metropolitan hubs in 2006, including a fatal accident in 2010 when the double-decker hit a railroad overpass, killing four passengers and injuring more than a dozen others.