A passenger who was travelling on a coach from Donegal to Dublin has described what happened in the moments leading up to it bursting into flames.
The Bus Eireann Expressway service was on its way from Letterkenny on Thursday before it burst into a blaze at around 8:30 pm at the Dry Arch Roundabout.
The fire service rushed to the scene to battle the blaze as Gardaí stepped in to manage traffic in the area.
Some 15 passengers were onboard at the time, and among them was Ciarán, who told Highland Radio what happened moments before disaster struck.
"It's a normal bus journey, we headed out the dual carriageway," he said.
"You're on your phone, you don't really be paying attention.
"The bus pulled in [and] I wasn't sure if was to pick somebody up or something like that.
"We stopped for about 10 minutes and the bus driver announced we were going to have to head back to Letterkenny because of a problem that had arose on the bus.
"We were heading back, we got on to the dual carriageway, he pulled over again."
As they got on their way once again - back to Letterkenny this time - the vehicle "died" in the middle of the Dry Arch Roundabout and "Smoke started to appear at the back of the cabin”.
Ciarán hailed the driver for his calm approach to evacuating the passengers in a moment of panic and said: "The bus driver came down; he did a great job I have to say.
"He just asked us all to get up and we all left the bus."
He announced that the bus was completely dead and that passengers needed to disembark immediately. Things moves so quickly that some people couldn't get to their belongings.
"We couldn't open the luggage doors, and there were people going on holidays with passports in there.
"There was smoke coming out of the back at this stage, and it was starting to flare up."
Ciarán said everybody was very calm, and a number of people managed to open the luggage compartment.
"We got the doors opened and then there was small flames just as that was happening," he said.
"We all moved back, we got all the bags out and everybody was very calm.
"I have to commend the bus driver too... you wouldn't think it was what it was, everything went pretty well”.
Thankfully there were no injuries from the terrifying incident, but Ciarán says it looked scarier than it was, and said he didn’t feel in any grave danger at any point.
"We all got off, and everybody was safe and then the Guards came,” he explained.
"I don't think there was any real danger at anytime and I would really speak highly of the man who was driving the bus.
"I didn't catch his name, but he's a cool enough customer.
"I've seen the video of it afterwards and it looked very, very scary - but at the time everybody was pretty calm and cool about it”.
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