Aussie volleyball team escapes blazing bus near Borås

A bus carrying a boy's volleyball team from Australia caught fire on Monday afternoon while traveling on highway 40 west of Borås in western Sweden.

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The fire, which erupted around 4pm, eventually consumed the entire bus and left several people suffering from injuries caused by the blaze’s thick smoke.

“The driver had time to tell passengers to get out,” said Lennart Cedervärn of the south Älvsborg emergency services to the TT news agency.

A parent to one of the boys on the bus told The Local that the boys on the team were between 15 and 20-years-old and that the players lost nearly all their possessions to the quickly spreading fire.

Two people also received minor injuries to their hands from breaking the back window to exit the bus.

Smoke from the blaze thick enough to cause an additional accident which sent two other people to hospital.

“Three cars collided after they drove into the smoke and slammed on their brakes,” said emergency services worker Bo Sandström to the Borås Tidning (BT) newspaper.

Highway 40 was closed in both directions as emergency crews dealt with the situation, resulting in major traffic delays.

The volleyball team, in Europe to compete against teams from Italy, Slovakia, and Sweden, was on its way to a match in Falköping when their bus caught fire.

It remains unknown what set off the blaze, which came just hours after yet another bus in the area had been destroyed by fire in an unrelated incident.

“It’s pretty weird to have two burning buses in one day. Bus fires are quite rare,” said Sandström.