Twenty Asian tourists heading for Butchart Gardens escaped injury Thursday when their bus caught fire on Keating Cross Road.
The driver and passengers had smelled smoke as they were travelling. The driver stopped the bus and got the passengers off before the flames took hold.
Central Saanich Police got a 911 call at 1: 07 p.m. reporting the fire.
Shane Power was driving westbound on Keating Cross Road when he saw billowing black smoke ahead.
"It looked like it had leaked diesel fuel all the way up the hill because it was all wet," said Power.
The back end of the bus was engulfed in flames, said Power, "and when all the air lines started burning through you could hear all the air coming out.
"Then the flames got bigger because it was fuelled by the air."
Const. Brent Robertson and his partner arrived to find the TourClick bus burning. All 20 passengers and the driver had safely disembarked. "There were no injuries," said Robertson.
"After speaking with the driver, it appears there was some sort of mechanical failure in the fuel line and the engine area which ignited the fire."
There was no explosion, said Robertson.
"This is very definitely a very rare occurrence for buses," he said.
A replacement bus was quickly found and the tourists were taken the rest of the way to their destination.
Dave Cowen, general manager of Butchart Gardens, said the rest of the tour went smoothly for the visitors.
"There was another bus standing by that was able to go up the road and pick them up and get them down [here]," he said. "They're on time schedules, so it's good news that they were able to resume their visit on schedule and get back on track for the visit."
Cowen said there were no reports of the tourists suffering any effects from the experience.
"Normally, if people are upset, we'll hear about it," he said. "We'll find out about it through our information centre or we'll assist. But it sounds like most of the passengers took it in stride and this is just one of those unfortunate things. Luckily, everybody was safe and got off in time."
The fire reduced the back half of the bus to charred metal.
Calls to the Vancouver tour operator, TourClick, were not immediately returned.
