Multiple buses at SEPTA lot in Nicetown caught in massive blaze

Hundreds of SEPTA employees at the transit agency’s largest bus depot in the city were met with a thick plume of black smoke early Thursday morning as a fire broke out in a rear lot reserved for decommissioned buses just ahead of peak rush hour.

The fire, which started in what SEPTA spokesperson Andrew Busch described as a “bus boneyard,” began sometime before 6:15 a.m. Thursday morning.

Officials said 40 buses in the lot at the Roberts Yard SEPTA Railroad Facility in Nicetown were damaged by the fire, which sent smoke hovering over the Roosevelt Expressway.

Firefighters initially had trouble gaining access to water to put out the blaze, according to Assistant Chief Charles Walker. But once SEPTA buses were towed out of the way and fences were taken down, firefighters quickly placed it under control.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives offered assistance because “small samples of explosives” are kept at the site, for canine training purposes, according to police. The samples, however, were not close to the fire and police said they were successfully removed.

The Philadelphia Department of Public Health warned nearby residents to stay inside and avoid the area. Health Commissioner Palak Raval-Nelson said elevated levels of benzene, ethyl benzene, and carbon monoxide were detected as the fire burned, but all dropped in the hours after the blaze was contained.

“I am confident that they will continue to drop into a safe zone,” Raval-Nelson said at an afternoon news conference.

Walker said nearby schools turned off their HVAC systems as the fire burned due to the large cloud of smoke it created.

It remained unclear how the fire began.

The section of the depot where the fire broke out is where buses that have been replaced are kept before being sold for scrap. Getting buses decommissioned requires the removal of fuel and lubricants, though SEPTA said some buses had not completed the process and still held some fuel.

Though foul play has not been ruled out, SEPTA general manager Scott Sauer seemed cool on the idea, emphasizing how even without designated 24-hour security, the depot has about 600 employees at the site at any given time. What’s more, Sauer said, the depot is far out of the way, with the decommissioned buses further tucked away in the rear of the facility.

“It’s not in a public area, and it’s adjacent to the railroad, so there’s no walking paths or any readily available access to that location,” Sauer said.

Fifteen of the buses involved in the fire were electric vehicles, but were disconnected and de-energized, Sauer told reporters at the news conference.

In 2022, a fire at SEPTA’s Southern Bus Depot started when a battery power pack in a bus ignited.

Sauer said it is unclear if Thursday’s fire originated in one of the electric buses, which the city has been storing while SEPTA is involved in litigation with Proterra, the company that manufactured the vehicles.

“I want to find a way to get them off site,” Sauer said. “We have to get them off of our property and away from the potential where we could have an incident like this that could have been far worse.”

The blaze did not have a major impact on SEPTA’s bus schedule Thursday. Busch said a majority of active buses were already out of the depot when the fire broke out.