Thomas Built Buses, a major manufacturer of school buses, has issued a recall order for five models produced between October of 2000 and January of 2006, and a number of Fort Bend area school districts have been impacted.
The recall order, issued March 28, spurred letters from Thomas Built to all customers that purchased the buses in question. The recall involves circuit breakers in the dashboard area that may cause a fire. Bus models involved include the ER, MVP-EF, FS-65, HDX and MVP-ER.
“The defect involves the Type II auto reset circuit breakers. The Type II auto reset circuit breaker temperatures may exceed the rating of the Tyco PC board, causing the board to melt potentially resulting in a vehicle fire,” the recall order said. “A vehicle fire may result in a crash.”
The letter encourages districts that operate the recalled buses to contact a Thomas Built Bus dealer to have the problem corrected.
Locally, one of the districts operating Thomas Built Buses is Fort Bend ISD. Transportation Director Richard Torres said the repairs under the recall notice have been completed.
“As a result of this recall, the transportation department did receive documentation (recall notices) from Thomas identifying vehicles that were affected by this service item/concern. Upon receiving this documentation, Thomas Bus Gulf Coast did schedule mechanics at each terminal to address this issue,” Torres said. “Therefore those buses that received recall notices were repaired by TBGC. If the department should receive any additional recall notices regarding this service item, the buses will be scheduled for repair.”
Katy ISD also has some of the recalled buses in its fleet and even experienced a situation a year ago in which one of the buses experienced a fire. District spokesman Steven Stanford said the bus company replaced circuit breakers in all buses and paid for the damaged bus.
“We had an issue last year (May 22, 2007) when one of the buses in the parking lot started smoking around 10 minutes after the driver turned it off. The circuit breaker compartment started burning and destroyed the driver’s area,” Stanford said. “Thomas Built Buses came out and replaced the circuit breaker panels on the remaining buses in that series in our fleet and paid us a settlement claim for the loss of the bus that caught fire.”
Jimmie Stegemiller, transportation director for the Lamar Consolidated Independent School District, said that repairs are under way on all recalled buses in the LCISD fleet.
“We have 42 Thomas buses that we have received recall notices on. Thomas Gulf Coast Buses is sending out a representative to address the potential problem on all of our 2004 models,” Stegemiller noted.
The Stafford Municipal School District does not have any Thomas Built buses in its fleet and was not affected by the recall. Buses operated by the Kendleton Independent School District are also not involved in the recall.
Representatives from the Needville Independent School District and the Brazos Independent School District have not responded to inquiries about whether any of their buses are part of the recall.
