HART COUNTY, Ga. (WYFF) -- A double-decker Megabus caught fire on Interstate 85 just over the South Carolina line in Georgia on Wednesday.
Sky 4 was overhead as the bus continued to smolder at about 1:30 p.m. The Highway Patrol said the bus caught fire just after noon.
Megabus.com sent a news release that said 80 passengers were on board and the bus was traveling from Atlanta to Charlotte.
The company said that the driver was able to safely get all the passengers off the bus and a second bus took them to Charlotte.
The bus caught fire just over the Georgia state line in Hart County.
As of 2 p.m. only one northbound lane was moving in this area.
The Highway Patrol did not have an estimate for how long the other lane would be shut down.
The Georgia Department of Transportation estimated that it would be about 3 p.m. before the interstate is fully reopened.
Dispatchers said that a blown tire on the bus may have to the fire. The company said the cause of the fire is unknown.
The backup as of 1:40 p.m. was at least 10 miles, approximately to Carnesville, Ga.
Megabus.com services 80 cities across the country. The website says: "Megabus.com is the first, low-cost, express bus service to offer city-to-city travel for as low as $1 via the Internet. Since launching in April 2006, megabus.com has served more than 18 million passengers."
This is the third time in two weeks that Megabus has been in the news. On Tuesday, a Megabus was involved in an accident that killed a pedestrian in Chicago. The woman was struck by a side mirror on the bus. The driver was ticketed for failure to yield to a pedestrian, according to Associated Press.
On July 26, a Megabus crashed into an overpass pillar on an interstate near Litchfield, Ill. killing a college student, according to AP. More than three dozen passengers were injured.
The company's statement said: "Safety remains our number one priority. We can confirm that the vehicle involved in the accident was manufactured by Van Hool in 2012 and had passed a full preventative maintenance check and has only operated a further 2,500 miles since. Maintenance checks are performed by megabus.com approximately every 10 days and the maintenance facility recently passed a Department of Transportation routine audit."
Megabus.com says it has the highest rating (Satisfactory) from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
WYFF