A fire broke out at a bus depot in Philadelphia’s Nicetown-Tioga neighborhood Thursday, burning about 40 buses.
The blaze ignited sometime before 6:30 a.m. at a Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority depot, the Philadelphia Fire Department said on X. It grew to a three-alarm fire, meaning that more than 150 fire personnel responded to the scene.
The fire department said it got the fire under control by 8:08 a.m. and that about 40 buses were affected. No one was injured, according to The Associated Press. The buses at the depot were all decommissioned.
“So this is like a boneyard where these are at. It’s just for vehicles that are pretty close to going to the scrap heap,” SEPTA spokesman Andrew Busch said, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The buses at the depot include gas-powered and electric models.
Fire officials didn’t say what could have caused the fire.
The Philadelphia Department of Public Health said on X that residents nearby should stay inside and keep doors and windows closed due to heightened levels of particulate matter and the pollutants benzene, ethylbenzene and carbon monoxide in the air that were caused by the fire.
PDPH also said the levels of pollutants were dropping over the course of the morning.
