It was a horrifying, one minute the UN bus was good and moments later, engulfed in flames. Is it legitimately a UN bus? No. Did it really catch fire? Yes. I’ll keep this story brief.

Our production company (Black Meadow Productions) was producing a low-budget film called Nine Grounds an action movie shot for direct to DVD. The script required a UN bus so I had to find one. I was lucky enough to get one at a government auction that was a little damaged for $3,000. We painted the necessary UN symbols on the sides…
began shooting a few scenes…
Our shooting schedule for the bus was just over a weekend. The dailies were looking good and the acting was better than planned and then came the final scene.

Unfortunately the final scene did not get lensed. The cast and crew were prepared to begin the shoot. We had the actors ready, makeup ready, set all the lighting, placed all the cameras and parked the bus in its proper location. Then “it” happened.

An unfortunate accident happened that I was not ready for. It began to burn in the rear and the crew rushed in with 5 or more fire extinguishers. It was not enough propellant so we quickly called the local fire department. Unfortunately we were way out in the sticks, in the woods so it took thema while to get on set. When the firemen arrived they jumped right on it.

They did an incredible job of dousing the fire, but because of the rural location we chose they didn’t arrive in time to save the bus.

Here are the remains..

Who would have guessed that school bus seats were soooooo flammable.

We had a camera mounted in the back interior of the vehicle. I would expect that it was very good footage in that camera. We will never get to see it though. Since it wasn’t part of the screenplay for the bus to burn so we had to re-write a few scenes. But all in all we got great footage of the bus in flames and exploding. That is what you call “production value”.

I expected that I would get none of my 3 grand back from that rubble. However, I just posted it to an online auction and it bid just under $1,000 for the remaining parts. Here’s a picture of them taking away my $2,000 mistake.

The best advice I could give from this experience is that if there is any pyro involved at all you should have the fire department on hand or at least close to your location.

Here is the trailer to Nine Grounds: