UPDATED: Four CVSD electric buses catch fire
The cause of the fire at Allen Brook School is still being investigated; new, diesel buses have been leased. The fire was the latest in a string of problems for the electric bus initiative.
UPDATE: At the regular meeting of the CVSD board, the district’s chief operating officer Gary Marckres reported the basic facts of the story and said that there were numerous entities investigating the cause of the fire: the Vermont State Police, the Vermont State Fire Marshall and investigators for the insurance companies of those involved – the company from which the district leased the buses, the company that made the buses, the manufacturers of the charging systems, etc. In general, he said, the fire was not suspicious, it appeared to be electrical. The logical assumption in these types of fires, he said, was that it was the charging system. He added that since the buses were parked and at their charging stations, the company leasing the buses, Highland Electric, is responsible and has paid for the leasing of six diesel-powered buses from Lamoille Transportation to replace the electric buses in the contract (the two undamaged are not being used in case the buses themselves present danger). Marckres said he hoped the investigations would be completed so the destroyed buses could be removed and the parking lot repaired.
Record Staff Report
Back in January, CVSD chief operating officer Gary Marckres admitted to the school board that the district’s experiment with leasing six electric buses, while environmentally friendly, “hasn’t gone that terrific. The buses haven’t been reliable” explaining that cold weather was preventing charging. “The bottom line is that they haven’t been available every day.”
Update: now four of them will never be available.
Late Wednesday night four of the six electric buses leased from Highland Electric Company and parked at Allen Brook School in Williston caught fire and were destroyed. The district closed Allen Brook for two days for clean-up and Williston Central for one day because of disruption of the bus routes. Both will be open Monday.
The district said it will not use the two undamaged electric buses until it knows what caused the others to catch fire. “We need some answers, and our most important job is to make sure our students are safe,” Bunting said.
The cause of the fire is still being investigated by a variety of agencies including Vermont State Police, Highland Electric and the bus manufacturer, Thomas Built Buses. The Williston Fire Department and CVSD said the fire did not seem of suspicious origin; the buses were docked at their charging stations at the time of the fire and investigators are looking at the elements of the school bus systems, including the chargers, batteries and electrical ports.
The district estimated the loss at $2 million and was trying to determine how much of that expense will fall to CVSD.
“Our hope is that we’re going to be able to recoup these expenses, of course, through insurance and other means,” CVSD Superintendent Adam Bunting told vtdigger.org. “But it’s probably going to take some time to figure that out.”
The buses have had their problems.
At the January board meeting Marckres said that “while not disparaging Highland Electric or the manufacturer,” the extreme cold was causing problems with the buses’ batteries and recharging system. He said Highland Electric and the district had been trying to resolve the problems. (UPDATE: Marckres said Tuesday that the problem with the charging system was in the “trickle charge” that is the system that charges the smaller, 12-volt battery that keeps the larger battery warm. He said it had been a software problem.)
The fire in the Allen Brook School parking lot was discovered by a custodian at about 10 p.m. Wednesday, and she immediately called 911. Upon arrival, fire crews found the four buses engulfed in flames and used a deck gun and two hand lines to extinguish the fire. No injuries were reported.
The four destroyed buses were among 60 school buses in the district’s fleet. On March 3, voters approved a $250,000 bond to purchase two new buses and two new vans.