Thai Road Crash Raises Questions About Safety of CNG-Powered Vehicles

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

The bodies of 20 children and three teachers were yesterday recovered after a bus transporting school pupils crashed and caught fire outside Bangkok. The bus was returning to the Thai capital after a school trip to the north of the country.

Videos from the scene showed flames engulfing the bus as it burned under an overpass, with huge clouds of dense black smoke billowing into the sky.

But the Transport Minister, Suriyahe Juangroongruangkit, said the bus was powered by “extremely risky” Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), raising posers over the safety of the fuel which Nigeria has recently invested billions of Naira to partly replace the use of expensive petrol.

But the Presidential CNG Initiative (PCNGI), the federal government organisation which drives the programme in Nigeria, has always stated that the fuel is not only cheaper but safer and less combustible than petrol.

“Yes, it is absolutely safe as a gas. Being lighter than air, in case of a leak, it rises up and disperses into the atmosphere. This property precisely makes it a safe fuel. Furthermore, CNG has a narrow flammability range.

“If CNG’s concentration in the air is less than 5 per cent and more than 15 per cent, the gas will not burn even in the presence of a spark,” the PCNGI office said in one of its Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) on its website.

The Chief Executive Officer of the PCNGI, Michael Oluwagbemi, has also on several occasions re-echoed that compared to petrol, CNG is far cheaper and does less harm to the environment.

“It (CNG) has the capacity of reducing inflation. It is cheaper. You can realise between 40 per cent to 50 per cent savings from patrol. This is good for Nigeria and it is safer. It is 18 time safer than our petrol and diesel. It is cleaner and safer for the environment,” Oluwagbemi stated recently.

But witnesses said the bus crashed into the concrete barrier dividing the highway just north of Bangkok, after a front tyre burst and was quickly consumed by an intense fire, with many on board were unable to get out, BBC News reported.

Nineteen children and three teachers were reported to have survived, 16 of whom are being treated in hospital for their injuries.

“This is a very tragic incident,”  Suriyahe told reporters at the scene. “The ministry must find a measure… if possible, for passenger vehicles like this to be banned from using this type of fuel because it’s extremely risky,” he added.

Piyalak Thinkaew, who was leading the search, said it was hard to identify the bodies because they were so badly burnt.

“Some of the bodies we found were very, very small,” he told reporters at the scene, adding that the fire started at the front of the bus. “The kids’ instinct was to escape to the back so the bodies were there,” he said.

Forensic police said of the 23 bodies found, eleven were male, seven female and a further five were unidentifiable.

Thailand has one of the worst road safety records in the world, with unsafe vehicles and poor driving contributing to roughly 20,000 fatalities a year.

The federal government of Nigeria hopes to achieve the conversion of 1 million petrol vehicles in the country to CNG by 2027 and has already built conversion centres and commenced distribution of free CNG conversion kits in some states of the federation.

According to the government, this will lead to between 40 per cent and 70 per cent savings for road transport users and operators, with commercial vehicles forming about 90 per cent of the transport users in Nigeria.