Writer’s Travel Journal Takes Dramatic Twist After His Megabus Blows Up

A reporter who was documenting a Megabus journey as part of his budget travel blog suddenly found himself at the centre of a much bigger story – after the vehicle caught fire and then exploded.

Lucas Peterson, who writes from the New York Times as The Frugal Traveler, was on a journey from Chicago to Milwaukee, in the US, on February 21, when the vehicle was forced to pull over.

An hour into the journey, the journalist had tweeted he was “turning around to ‘switch buses’” and “currently learning that on @megabus, you get what you pay for.”

But things quickly took a dramatic twist. Thirteen minutes after his first tweet he posted again to say that the bus had caught fire.

Just five minutes later, it exploded.

Peterson later said that after leaving Chicago on the $1 (71p) journey there “immediately seemed to be something wrong [because] we stopped on shoulder of highway couple times [and the] driver got out.”

He wrote: “Driver says it’s just a flat tire, that there’s no need to panic, and goes outside. Minutes later smoke starts pouring out of the bus.

“Small fire over wheel becomes big; people abandon luggage and get away. Entire thing goes up in flames, series of loud booms.”

The bus was evacuated and, thankfully, no one was injured in the fire or explosion.

However, many passengers lost property in the damage, such as Alexei O'Brien, a student at the University of St Thomas, who lost his clothes, schoolwork and hundreds of pounds in textbooks.

Peterson also spoke to Alice Taylor, a passenger, “who estimated that she lost $1,700 [£1,205] worth of possessions, including her laptop.”

According to Megabus’s terms and conditions – which Peterson tweeted – only $250 (£177) would be covered.

The company sent a replacement Megabus and Peterson and other passengers arrived in Milwaukee five hours late.

(Credit: The Frugal Traveler)