Thanksgiving Day Car Fire

Originally Posted by spearfish25

Well, today wasn't what we expected.

My brother flew in from San Fran and along with my wife, we went down to my dad's townhouse in the 'burbs. My brother has been storing a 1979 Corvette in my dad's garage. After a little lounging around, my bro and I took the vette for a spin around the block and then parked it in the garage again. About 10 minutes later, we're all sitting in the living room when the smoke alarms start going off. I walked down the hallway to the garage and found the glass door into the garage was pitch black on the other side. Assuming it was just because the garage lights were off, I pull the door open into a wall of black smoke. Slammed the door, got everyone out of the house and called 911 in the process.

We opened the garage from the outside, and a massive cloud of smoke came rushing out. As things cleared slightly, we were able to get my dad's yellow Audi TT backed out of the garage and parked down the street. We didn't dare try moving the vette as the smoke as well as 3' tall flames were coming from under the hood.

It took the fire department 25 minutes from the time of my 911 call to arrive and get water on the fire. An additional 5 minutes was spent troubleshooting why the fire hydrants weren't providing any water to the trucks. After dousing the garage, cutting two roof holes, and opening up the house, things finally settled down.

My dad lost a large portion of his huge wine collection and smoke damage was pretty severe throughout the house. Fortunately everyone got out safe and sound with no injuries during any of the event.

My only loss was my stock exhaust which was being stored in the garage. Looks like my car won't ever be stock again!

Going back tomorrow to shoot some formal pics with the DSLR for insurance purposes and documentation.