Burn, Baby, Burn

Geno and I ran to a couple of stores this afternoon, and (while I was googling a Sizzix Texture Boutique at Michael's) Geno got a call from a number he didn't recognize. He usually just lets it go to voicemail, but he just had a feeling he needed to answer. It was Mark. His car was on fire and he was on his phone with the 911 dispatcher. We left immediately. Mark sounded pretty shook up, so Geno wanted to get home for him, but then Mark texted us a photo and Geno hit the turnpike! As we pulled up, this is what we saw:

Not so bad, right? Well, until you walked around to this side:

Holy cow! My first question to Mark was if he was ok.

Apparently a neighbor saw the smoke and came running over (thank you, Becky!) and she said the flames were as high as the house. However, no smoke damage or any hint of fire to the house. Look how close that was to the Camaro in the garage!

This fireman told me that they were very careful to avoid any damage to the Camaro. I asked Mark if he told them to be careful, but he said it was just "man instinct." Lol

This is through the trunk looking into the driver's seat:

And, above is the driver's seat. How scary is that?

The fire investigator stayed until well after dark sifting through what was left of Mark's car.

What did he find? Mark's car wasn't even running when it caught fire. His keys were in the garage along with everything he had just taken out while cleaning the car--GPS, his phone, his wallet, a movie. He had spent almost 3 hours washing the car, shining the tires, cleaning the windows, and vacuuming it out. He had taken the floor mats into the garage to vacuum. When he opened the back door to put the mats in, he was hit with black smoke. He dropped the floor mats (you can see them melted together outside the door in front of the fireman) and ran to open the driver's door. He was met by flames! He ran into the house to get the fire extinguisher (which was right under the kitchen sink) but he couldn't find it. When he came back out, he called 911. Apparently, there was a short in the circuit board right under the radio that was the origin of the fire. Since nothing was on in the car, and it hadn't been running for over 2 hours, it could have been a spark from the light coming on when he opened a door to clean the window? In any case, it was going to happen at some point and we are very grateful that it wasn't while he was driving or when he had the grandkids in the car!

The best part:

While Mark was holding both phones trying to talk to Geno and 911 AND the neighbor had already come running over from the street behind us because she saw the smoke AND there were flames shooting out from the car...a sweet little old lady stops and asks Mark

"Is your car on fire?"

Nope! Just toasting some marshmallows.

Here's your sign.