Monorail service delayed as coach tyre catches fire

Fire and Rescue Department personnel are tackling a fire at the Titiwangsa monorail station. – Pic courtesy of Malaysian Fire Department, March 30, 2015.The monorail service was temporarily delayed when a tyre of a four-car train coach caught fire at the Titiwangsa Station this morning.

Chief operations officer of the Kuala Lumpur Fire Station, Shamsol Maarif Saibani said the station received a call at 8.52am regarding the fire and a team of firemen arrived at the scene about five minutes later.

Immediately upon arrival, all train passengers were ordered out of the coaches and the monorail operator was directed to move the burning coach to a location further away from the buildings.

"Currently, work to extinguish the fire is still ongoing," he said in a Bernama report.

He added that 22 firemen and three engines were rushed to the location to put out the fire.

In a separate incident, a two-car train was stranded between Imbi station and Bukit Bintang station due to technical problems. A rescue train was dispatched which pushed the stranded train to Imbi station to allow the passengers to disembark.

“Rapid Rail is carrying out an internal investigation into both incidents and apologise for the inconvenience caused,” Shamsol said in a statement.

Earlier, RapidKL, the operator of the city's integrated public transport system, had tweeted from its account that there was smoke coming from below a monorail train at the Titiwangsa station.

"Terdapat asap di bahagian bawah tren di Stn Titiwangsa. Pihak Bomba sedang mengawal kawasan kejadian," read the tweet by @MyRapidKL.

The Integrated Transport Information System DBKL had also tweeted concerning the incident.

“Fire at Titiwangsa monorail station. Fire brigade and police at location. Traffic congested in vicinity of location,” read the tweet which was made at 9.15am today.

A later tweet by RapidKL at 10.20am said the train was still experiencing technical problems at the same station, and commuters were asked to find other alternatives.

- TMI