A preliminary investigation has been conducted on the tragic tour bus fire that killed 26 people in Taiwan on Tuesday,
including 24 tourists from the mainland. The latest findings indicate
that the emergency exit might have been locked due to anti-theft
modifications.
Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA)
quotes an unspecified professional in the traffic industry as saying
that tour bus emergency exits are often equipped with anti-theft bolts
that prevent the door from being opened from either side unless it is
manually disabled from inside the bus.
Reporters from EBC News
had a manager of a tour bus agency test an emergency door of the same
model. The manager took 20 seconds to successfully open the door, making
it very questionable that the door would have been opened in an
emergency situation, especially with passengers’ vision blurred by
smoke.