This is getting to be a habit

[rachelmanija]

This weekend while driving in Pasadena I turned the corner and saw a plume of smoke. An SUV in a parking lot had flames erupting from the hood. No one was visible anywhere nearby.

I pulled over across the street, grabbed my fire extinguisher, and ran to the crosswalk. Two security guards ran up from the general direction of the burning SUV, and began stopping traffic.

I ran up to one and said, "Is anyone inside that vehicle?"

He said, "No. And I don't think you should get near it-- a fire truck is on its way, and that fire is getting bigger by the second."

I retreated across the street. There was a loud explosion from the SUV. The whole thing became enveloped in flames. The fire truck pulled up and extinguished it. They broke the windows and opened the doors, and smoke billowed out in great gray puffs. I then had a very bad moment when it occurred to me that I should have asked the guard the follow-up question, "Did you check?" But the firefighters didn't pull anyone out and I waited for quite a while, so I assume there had not been anyone inside.

When I later recounted this to Adrian (who is still in Denver), it occurred to me that perhaps burning vehicles are less uncommon than I imagined, and it is not so odd that I would have encountered this phenomenon three times.

"How many burning vehicles have you seen in your life?" I asked him.

"None," he replied. "So I leave for a week, and you get an earthquake and a flaming SUV... you just can't be left alone, can you?"

Public service announcement # 1: Vehicles do not normally catch fire following a crash! If a crashed vehicle is not burning and there are no other urgent safety hazards, do not attempt to extract the occupants or exit the vehicle! Crash victims should stay where they are and not move until medical personnell can make sure their spines are stabilized.

Public service announcement # 2: If a vehicle is already burning, especially if the engine is on fire, be aware that the fire can and probably will spread really fucking quickly. (This goes for non-vehicular fires as well.) I've now seen this happen twice. Get the hell out or get anyone inside out as fast as you can.

Scientific Livejournal Poll!


[Poll #1235218]

Comments

[nekonexus.livejournal.com]

My first aid training is sadly lapsed (I really should remedy this), and my emergency preparedness training has mostly come from reading Jim McDonald's "Trauma and You" posts on Making Light.

I also lack fire extinguisher. >.>

However! I have seen, usually from a distance, several burning or (spectacularly) burnt out vehicles in and around the GTA. My count is kind of fuzzy. (I did not actually see the garbage truck collide with the paint truck -- the combination of which melted the asphalt off the highway -- but it was a rather freak occurrence... of the kind that seems to happen frighteningly often on the 400-series highways here in Ontario. )

[genarti]

Likewise, which is why I put myself as just an average passerby. I'm not sure a many-years-lapsed CPR certification and some Making Light (etc) posts really count. *sheepish*

This is one of those things I really should remedy at some point. It seems a good and useful thing to be more current in.

Edit: oh, and no cars on fire here. The one time I was in a wreck I did get out of the car, but it wasn't because of any fear of fire. (The car was upside-down and ended up totaled, but I was totally fine. Just a little bit dazed/shocky from the adrenaline and the surreality of going from "heading out of my driveway, straight down the same road as always" to "EVADING CARS ACK I'M ROLLING" in the cornfield. Fire didn't really occur to me as a worry at the time. There was no smell of smoke or gasoline, either, so no cause to think it'd be a danger even if I'd been thinking that analytically.)

[kintail.livejournal.com]

On the topic of your second question but not actually an option:

[x] Been in a car accident and injured/stuck/unable to move/forbidden to exit the vehicle by a first aider, and been TERRIFIED the vehicle was going to burst into flames which didn't help with the general terrified and freaking out, KTHX stupid TV stereotypes which I didn't know better about, HISS.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Oh, how awful. (If it was the last case, the first aider should have reassured you!)

The movie thing is a problem. Either people assume it's true and that crashed cars commonly explode, or they think that it's completely untrue and that car fires are not all that dangerous-- and neither is correct.

[calligrafiti.livejournal.com]

When I lived out in the NC countryside, I had some neighbors who were mean to their dogs. There was nothing I could get them arrested or fined for on animal cruelty grounds (I checked), but I definitely thought they sucked. They also liked old muscle cars. One day I was walking my roommate's dog along the road and saw them driving an old corvette towards their house. Smoke started pouring out from under the front hood, and then flames. They pulled over to the side and got out, watching their car burn with looks of deep sorrow on their faces. For a moment I thought I'd finally mastered setting things on fire with my mind, but as it hasn't happened since I guess it was a fluke.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

BWA-HA-HA!

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

My most notable burning vehicle experience happened when I was a kid: the family International Harvester truck (a proto-SUV) spontaneously caught fire in the parking lot of a mall at Christmas time. Nothing like coming out and finding that the reason for all the excitement is you!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I've seen two cars on fire and thought mine was on fire at one point. Mine was when some gauge or other in mine cracked, causing something else to break when it got overheated, and steam to pour forth from my vehicle when I was trapped in rush-hour traffic. Terrified, I managed to pull over off the road a few minutes later and threw myself and everything I needed (purse, phone, iPod, books) out of the car and called roadside assistance. Eventually it stopped, and I realized it probably wasn't going to catch on fire (the difference between steam and smoke not exactly being apparent when you're terrified and trapped in traffic), and got back into the car to get out of the sun while waiting for the tow truck.

One car on fire was just on the side of the road, and the other was in Nairobi. I was in a taxi driving to downtown, and looked down a street as we passed it at breakneck speed and saw a blue car with flames roaring up out of it that were, I think, the height of the two-story building it was next to. If someone told me it had been firebombed instead of catching on fire by itself, I'd believe it. (There was nothing about firebombings in the newspaper the next day, but I don't know how much control of the press the Tanzanian government has.)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I was also in Denver when a car there was struck by lighting during 5-o'clock traffic and set on fire. Did not see it, alas, as it was not on my commute home, but I remember hearing it on the news.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I have pulled over to fight a brush fire. As did three other people.

Which doesn't actually count, of course, but it did seem like a good idea at the time, and the firefighters thought it was pretty cool that a couple of us actually had fire extinguishers.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Dude, cool!

[veejane.livejournal.com]

My one flaming vehicle was something I saw while speeding like the dickens somewhere on the network of highways around New York City. It was dusk, and that tricky part of dusk when your eyes just feel dim but you're not smart enough to turn your lights on yet, and I whipped past a flaming elderly shmoozemobile pulled over by the side of an exit.

I know I was speeding because (a) I saw it and it was gone, that fast; and (b) sitting right next to it was a police car and I was so going to be busted. Except that there was a car on fire and that was more important.

...But I had to look for it in my rearview to make sure my mind wasn't playing tricks on me. Except for the whole property-destruction-and-mayhem, kind of a lovely weird liminal experience.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Totally surreal. Mythology aside, cars don't really burn all that much.

I have seen them twice. Both times alongside highways. (Actually, one was immediately post-burning.)

However, there was a fatal head-on collision a block from my old house (in the same intersection where I had the brush fire experience, synchronistically!) where both cars burst into flames, and a bystander managed to pull one of the drivers (the drunk who caused the accident, so it happens) to safety. The passengers in the other car died.

Rachel, does smoke count? Because I was caught in a massive traffic jam once (also in Vegas) when a tanker truck rolled over under a bridge overpass and burned. I never actually saw the fire, but everybody in southern Nevada saw the plume... *g*

[em-h.livejournal.com]

I picked 3 rather than 1 in response to the first question because I've mostly been in post-war and near-war zones rather than war zones as such. So I've seen burnt-out vehicles, but never any that were in the actual process of burning.

In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a non-deliberate, non-controlled fire in person, leaving aside tiny things like flaming pans in kitchens. I've dealt with some reasonably dramatic situations including arterial bleeding (not my own), but fire and I don't seem to be drawn to each other.

[cofax7]

I was walking the dog a few months ago and spotted a car where the windows were... weirdly foggy. Yellow-brown fog, and I realized after a minute that the car was on fire. So I banged on the house door several times, no response, eventually found a neighbor to call 911. When the fire truck showed up, THEN the owner of the car came to the door--he'd been sleeping upstairs and somehow hadn't heard the fuss.

Interesting and unsettling both.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

If you spend enough time commuting in the Bay Area, you will eventually see a burning vehicle. I think I've only seen one, and it was from a distance. Left some remarkable scorch marks on the stone sound wall along I-4, though!

I got close enough to a burning trailer home (in Arkansas, of course) to feel the heat billowing off of it. Gah. That put more fear of fire into me than anything else--it's hard to appreciate the sheer power of a fire till you get close to one. The erstwhile residents were standing around outside. We asked if they needed help, and they said they were OK and help was on the way.

I did come home on Halloween once to find that no, really, those fire trucks headed up my street? Going to my wooden Victorian deathtrap house. Trick or treat!

[sophia-helix.livejournal.com]

Yep, the only burning car I've seen was off the 580 in Oakland. That's also the same stretch of road where someone threw a milkshake out their window and it hit my windshield. I love the East Bay.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

I used to deliver the local paper in a smaller town, driving rural roads all night. The Oregonian carrier overlapped my route. He was crazy and drove like an idiot. One night we came across him, parked by the side of the road, flames shooting out of the engine compartment of his truck. The freakin' idiot was trying to rescue all of his bundles of newspapers from the truck. E.F. and a second passerby who stopped had to physically restrain him while I called 911. The entire truck was engulfed within another minute. Fire truck arrived just as gas tank exploded.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

One of my shitmobiles started smoking from the steering column once. I had to pull over into the fast lane emergency lane and park on the 405 with my one year old daughter. This was before cell phones.

I have had two shitmobiles suddenly go into the red zone when the cooling system failed, and begin steaming and smoking. As always, I was stuck alone on the freeway for many hours and no rescue.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

I've only seen burning vehicles a couple times, but I've driven a car that started to smoke from beneath the hood. That was decidedly unnerving.

[janni.livejournal.com]

My first aid training is fairly barebones and probably needs renewing, but it's there.

I did have green smoke billow out of my car once, but it stopped when I turned the car off, no flames followed, and I simply had it towed to the shop ...

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I've seen several burning vehicles (including a large motorhome), and the vehicle fire I put out was my own. The trunk had caught fire due to a short in the wiring system catching the trunk pad alight.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I did come across a burning couch in the middle of the street once. It was a college neighborhood, though, and I heard sirens approaching, so I didn't stop.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

James Nicoll?

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

Of Usenet fame (infamy?) who is spectacularly accident-prone and his accidents are often so surreal you couldn't get away with putting them in works of fiction.

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

I have seen at least three vehicles on the interstate in various states of burn including "obviously was gutted by an already extinguished fire". I had to evacuate my car once when the battery dried out/overheated/was smoking such that the nice police officer who stopped to help called the fire dept and had me wait with him by his cruiser until the fire fighters disconnected the battery and said it was safe (but not to try using the battery ever again). Also, there was a mouse nest in our riding lawn mower that caught on fire and set the mower's engine on fire, and we extinguished it with a fire extinguisher before it got really scarey and the mower was usable again afterward.

[tevriel.livejournal.com]

Where by "from a distance" I actually mean "drove past it one lane away", because the traffic was still doing that. I felt no need for intervention because the occupants of the car were standing a short distance away watching it and looking distressed, and the police were there and the fire department's sirens were audible.

As we approached, it was a car stopped and smoking. As we passed, it was a car engulfed in flames. So yes. REALLY FUCKING QUICKLY with the spreading.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Although I've only seen one flaming vehicle that wasn't on the side of a highway, already surrounded by emergency vehicles, and not really memorable in any way.

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

Been present for on the order of 10 car accidents, most minor and one a multivehicle multifatality. I've never seen a burning car.

I can also attest that if you run a car out of oil so that the engine seizes and fails... that's not enough to set the car on fire.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

I was turning left, the vehicle stalled out. Suddenly yellow smoke started pouring into the cab and when I looked ahead the paint of the hood was blistering and peeling and flames were shooting out from around the edges of the hood.

My friend and I scrammed out of the car and luckily cell phones were around then because we had a few people stop and call 911.

When the fire crew arrived they had to damage the hood to get it open as it had welded itself to the engine.

Cause of the fire? The investigator figures it was a hot day, there was an accumulation of gasses under the hood, and something leapt up from the road and sparked.

The irony here was I had only owned the vehicle for five days and I hadn't bothered taking out fire insurance because I was cheap and cars don't catch on fire. XD

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I have not yet encountered a burning vehicle.

My older brother did, though, and crawled under it with an extinguisher to put it out.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Wait, I completely forgot the time Jasmine and I were driving to Hamilton from Toronto and we noticed that the car ahead of us (whose brake light had been flickering the whole way down the 403 [?]) was the source of the odd smell we'd attributed to Hamilton. The rim of the front driver's side wheel was blue-white hot and there was smoke pouring off the tire. We only noticed this as they turned north up the 6 and we turned south into the city...

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

I've been in one that caught fire. Fortunately, it was just a little fire, caused by a leaky hose dropping oil onto my engine block. But I did see flames when I opened the hood to see why there was black smoke pouring out from under it.

[serrana.livejournal.com]

My dad once pulled a couple of kids out of a burning car.

He got named in the general-purpose lawsuit the family filed afterward, too. This was, I believe, before California had a Good Samaritan law. My uncle went into court on his behalf and was Distinctly Not Friendly, which resolved the situation.

I have since helped people out of non-burning cars after accidents, in situations where there was leaking fuel but no grievous injuries, and once put out a flaming propane canister before it exploded (that was kind of an adventure, actually). In neither case did I get sued, so I'd probably do it again.

I've had one of my cars more-or-less catch on fire while I was driving it (hint: it's a really bad idea to pop the hood if you see smoke coming out of the air vents), and my mother-in-law once abandoned her car by the side of the road after it caught fire fairly spectacularly. But that's the sort of person she is.