Comedian Bert “The Machine” Kreischer says he’s lucky to be alive after his tour bus caught fire between stops in the Midwest.
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On March 15, the 53-year-old shared a photo of the bus’s charred remains on Instagram, captioning the post, “We are all safe, but my bus is gone.”
The Free Bert star had just performed in Fargo, N.D., on March 14 and was en route to his next show in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
In a since-expired Instagram Story, he showed his team the photo and remarked, “We would have all been on it asleep … [we] would have been dead.”
Later that day, Kreischer told PEOPLE that the bus’s front right tire had blown out on Interstate 94 around midnight after his North Dakota show, which is why his team wasn’t on board during the fire.
“It was a fluke accident,” he told the outlet. “We hit nothing, and it was no fault of the driver’s. We waited outside for a couple hours.”
The team then decided to leave the bus on the highway. The crew split up into the other two tour buses while they waited for the vehicle to be fixed.
Around 11 a.m. on March 15, the bus driver who had remained with the vehicle heard a popping sound from its roof.
“Within a matter of seconds, the bus was filled with smoke,” Kreischer recalled. The comedian added that the driver “exited the bus,” and it went “up in flames” before he could get back to see what happened.
Bert Kreischer Posts Several Updates After Tour Bus Destroyed in Fire
Kreischer also shared a video of the burning bus on his Instagram Stories.
In a follow-up Instagram Story, Kreischer and his team were seen listening to Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.” The comedian then assured viewers, “We’re all safe. If anyone’s wondering, we’re all safe.”
Meanwhile, Kreischer and his team lost many belongings in the fire, including clothing and other items left on the bus.
Before his Sunday show, Kreischer shared one last Instagram Story photo. He posed outside a Dick’s Sporting Goods, where the group had gone to buy new clothes, and wrote, “My current & only outfit.”
“Me, the other comedians, my assistant, and my trainer are all very lucky,” Kreischer told PEOPLE. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
”As annoyed as we were to blow out a tire on a highway in a snowstorm in the middle of nowhere, we are all counting our blessings today that we weren’t on the bus when the fire broke out,” the comedian added.