Essay by Eric Worrall
Thankfully the quick thinking driver evacuated the kids before the bus burst into flames.
School bus catches fire in Montreal, 5 children inside unharmed
Driver evacuated bus after noticing smoke coming out of vents, fire department says
CBC News · Posted: Sep 09, 2025 11:53 AM EDT | Last Updated: September 10
In Montreal, five children and their bus driver are unharmed after their electric school bus caught fire on Tuesday morning.
The incident happened near the intersection of Jean-Talon Street West and Victoria Avenue in the city’s Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood.
In a statement to CBC News, the Centre de services scolaire de Montréal (CSSDM), the province’s largest school service centre, confirmed the bus was transporting children attending one of its schools.
The school service centre told CBC News the driver parked the bus and got himself and the elementary school students off it after noticing an unusual odour.
…
Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/school-bus-fire-1.7628940
A video of the fire;
According to former firefighter captain Patrick Durham of StacheD Training, a risk reduction training organisation, this is the third Lion Electric fire this year. Durham disputes claims there was no battery involvement in the fire.
How many articles have we published in recent years about EV fire problems? Proponents can make all the excuses they want, but I wouldn’t be happy if my kid was being transported in an electric school bus.
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The comments went awol! Here is mine:
“The fire was not caused by the battery,” said Martin Guilbault, division chief with the Montreal Fire Department. “It has nothing to do with the fact that the bus is electric. It could have happened to any vehicle.”
This was in the CBC report but was not quoted here:
“The fire service also says the battery system of the electric bus was not related to the fire, and was not affected by the blaze.”
Edit: see my reply below, likely not a battery fire.
Factual. Valid point.
Probably from a cheap Chinese diesel heater as they can’t finish their route if they heat with electricity
What else do they have in there? A petrol engine to top up the battery en route?
Didn’t say if the bus was a hybrid or not.
Makes sense. Even accounting for cheaper labor, you can’t put out a comparable product for 1/5-1/8th the cost of the durable product that is – I believe – still installed in many North American long haul trucks.
Lots of good Chinese products out there – the mid drive on my e bike costs ~2/5 of a Bosch and has performed well for 7 years – but not all…
Canadians appears to have bigger problems than incendiary buses. The reporter and every parent interviewed were foreign national “colonizers.”
Quebec’s official language is French. Slightly more than half can conduct a conversation in English. Might be the reason rather than your assessment.
Used to attend the Montreal Jazz Festival for 40 years. The city was so vibrant!
That started to change over the the last 30 years so much that former ethnic communities have completely disappeared. Little Italy is now Little Iran. Plus all the homeless and drunks sleeping in doorways kinda takes away from the charm. Haven’t been back for several years.
FTVideo: “Batteries not involved” ? Define “involved” when it is clearly an electrical fire. Don’t believe your lyin’ eyes?
Google claims (Septemer 14, 2025)
Timeline of incidents
November 2024: A Lion electric bus caught fire in Ascot Corner, Quebec. Fire officials attributed this fire to the heating system.
January 2025: A second Lion electric bus fire occurred in Huntsville, Ontario. This time, 70 students were safely evacuated.
September 2025: Another Lion electric bus carrying five children and a driver caught fire in Montreal, leading to the latest round of investigations and grounding of the fleet.
Cause
Lion Electric school buses use a diesel-powered heating system, rather than an all-electric one, to maximize the buses’ electric range. A wiring issue with this heating system, not the high-voltage battery, is the suspected cause of the recent fires.
The fire did not ultimately cause the main EV battery to catch fire. According to reports from the Montreal Fire Department and Lion Electric, the bus’s battery system was not involved in or affected by the blaze. Firefighters were able to extinguish the flames before they reached the main battery.
“Firefighters were able to extinguish the flames before they reached the main battery. “
In spite of my reply to Stokes above, this seems to confirm it wasn’t a battery fire. They wouldn’t have been able to put it out otherwise.
At the very least, these should properly be referred to as “Lion diesel electric buses”, so that no unwitting school districts or their clients are under any illusions about their supposedly “virtue signaling” fleet.
vested interests at play in Quebec.
The Canadian accent has changed a bit?
Electric School Bus …. think electric oven.
Electric busses are bad thing, everybody knows that.
If, if it was wiring, why did the fire engulf so much of the vehicle? How many flammables are in the design? That should be addressed.
Diesel heater. Missed that the first pass.
Flooring, seat cushions, plastic molding, rubber seals, some types of insulation, oil/grease to lubricate the various moving parts
It is interesting the flames seem to be limited to the front of the bus. At least from the images shown and the descriptions posted, the fire did not engulf the whole vehicle. Good thing, too.
To your point – If true, it seems there is room for improvements. At least flooring and seat cushions can be fire retardant.