Hey , that cars on fire !!!!

[marcus]

an interesting thing happened at work last night.

I was finishing up at 3am and had just clocked off and was walking out to the car park with the usual banter with co-workers about "another day another dollar" type stuff when someone said "Hey that cars on fire !!!!!"

and sure enoguh it was.
a night shift employess transit van was sitting outside with smoke pouring out of it , one guy ran back inside to grab the owner while we carefully approached the van , as we got closer we could hear the crackling and sizzling of the fire inside but could see in the windows.

we then decided we better get an extinguisher which we did and the owner also arrived , he then unlocked the van and opened the passenger door.

of course the instant rush of air enraged the flames and the whole thing started to go up until the trusty extinguisher arrived.

alls well that ends well , the flames were put out and nothing was left smoldering.

on further examination of the vehicle we found the culprit for the flames , and would you believe it was a portable cassette player.

the owner doesnt have a tape deck in the van so he used a radio cassette player to listen to tapes or radio while driving he had it sitting between the two seats in the front next to the gear shift , it seems that this somehow has caught fire , we think possibly because of the batteries he used to power the radio.

the whole radio had melted and was smoldering away and caught the carpet alight which created so much intense heat that part of the sterring wheel melted and even the sunvisors had melted down the windscreen and onto the dash board.

the whole thing was a complete messeven the passenegr seat was savaged by the flames.

but as I said thankfully everything ended ok and the van wasnt burnt to the ground and didnt engulf the vehicles that were parked next to it.

an amazing thing really and all because of just a simple tape deck with batteries left in it ( and face we have all done that before)

a very lucky bloke to still have his car which i might add was still drivable as nothing mechanical was damaged.

certainly livened our night at work up anyway.

but also it raised a good point that even though we havent faced any serious problems at work our crew did a pretty impressive thing when faced with a potential incident.

[Emfa]

That's a wild story! That guy sure was lucky that you were leaving work when you were!

[Craig]

And that is the end result of using VARTA batteries... next time use Duracell...

[Bluebottle]

Just to even out your strange bias Craig, my dad had a Duracell explode one time.....


Back to topic please.....

[KC]

When I worked in Texas we had a car burn in the parking lot. Some of us grabbed extinguishers and went out to put it out but we could not open it up and basically by the time the FD got there it was totally gone. Strangely enough a woman passing by about a month later pulled into the visitors parking lot with her car on fire. We managed to put it out.

Its not uncommon to see burned cars or burning cars in Oklahoma on the side of the road in our summer time. Some just start buring from the excess heat. Its not uncommon to find asphalt temperatures over 180 degrees F by midafternoon. Hard on tires too.

[Stephen Green]

Another good reason to carry an extinguisher in your car. A good tip is, where possible, don't open doors, windows or bonnets. As you read the sudden rush of fresh air feeds the fire. If possible only open things a tiny amount and pour the extinguishant in through the gap. Dry powder is the best thing to quash a fire.

[avsfan733]

No kidding Stephen!

We had a fir under the cover of our mower deck today, when we got the cover off it went from smoldering to 3 ft flames alsmost instantly