Thanksgiving Day Car Fire
 

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.

Holy Crap! I'm so sorry! Man, I hope your old man had that wine collection well documented for insurance.

FYI - get a cleaning company to do an Ozone Bath on the house. It's amazing how fast it gets rid of the smell. Don't ask me how I know ;)

SERVPRO Janitorial Services

Thank God no one was injured! So sorry to hear this man, that is a terrible way to spend Thanksgiving.

Damn man. Hope everything works out, glad everyone is safe!

Any idea on how the Vette lit up?

omg! not what was expected at all today...

glad to hear you all are ok...

too bad about the vette, weird though why it caught fire after yall just took it for a spin...good thing you were able to retrieve the Audi TT!

man that sux, glad no one was hurt though........ material things can be replaced !

John

Sorry this happened dude. Glad everyone was ok, can' t replace folks dear to us.

You guys got very lucky, as a firefighter I've seen alot of situations like that turn out really bad. Good luck with cleaning everything up. Might of lost a great car but atleast you didn't lose the house, or someones life.

Wow that sucks, dude. Glad everyone is OK.

sucks!!! that is a nice place. hopefully the insurance wont try to pull any bullcrap with the car.

It had been sitting in the garage for a year or so. My brother came back from law school (his car), so we fired it up and took it for a spin. There was quite a bit of white smoke during the drive coming from the tail pipes. The suspicion is a bad head gasket or a cracked block was the cause. So we brought it back, took a look under the hood, and everything looked fine. Seriously, nothing under the hood looked suspicious (and definitely not smoking or on fire).

Then, 10 minutes later...the rest of the story unfolded. My brother did run into the garage when we first noticed and saw the flames coming from the passenger side towards the front of the engine bay. He said there is an ignition relay there. My suspicion is that an oil leak hit the headers and lit up.

Thanks for your best wishes everyone.

Sorry to hear about this. Luckily, this didn't happen at night.

I'm glad everyone was alright.

The cause of most car engine fires is a leaking power-steering either from a fluid hose or the PS unit itself. The fluid almost always travels onto the catalytic converters or some portion of the manifilds or headers. If it hits the cats its instant ignition.

Wow that really sucks! How bad was the damage to the garage?

I agree that it was either PS or a fuel leak. The flashpoint of engine oil is well north of 400F, and the exhaust headers cool to below 400F pretty quickly after parking. The flashpoint of modern PS fluid is also above 400F but the old mineral type stuff can ignite at a much lower temperature especially as it ages.

I always keep a few large fire extinguishers around, garage, kitchen, basement, and upstairs closet. But given how far this had progressed by the time you found it I'm not sure you would have even be able to use them. Although I'm rather amazed that a couple of the firefighters didn't try that while the others were fiddling about with the water hoses.

I never knew power steering fluid could be a culprit. Another guy we spoke with felt pretty strongly it was fuel related. I think my bro replaced a lot of hoses about 5-6 years ago, but rubber lines can surely break down in that time with an unused, stored car.

I too was amazed that none of the firemen really did anything to temporize things while they were sorting out the water issues. The trucks arrived about 20 minutes after our 911 call, but a fire chief rolled in only 10 minutes after the call. Despite the fire being rather small when he arrived, he didn't even come evaluate things or bring an extinguisher. He just sat in his SUV about 4 houses away while he got dressed until the trucks arrived. I was a bit perplexed, but who knows. Maybe he knew that a fire extinguisher wouldn't do much, even when he first arrived.

Any before pics of the car?

:iagree:

Did not see you say before pics....:owned:

My brother is looking for some...he has them stashed away someplace.

The pic below is essentially identical except our car had mirrored t-tops. I think due to the scarcity of original t-tops, the mirrored t-tops alone were worth nearly as much as the 'complete' car.

that really stinks. I'm glad noone was hurt.

I take it the Fire Dept is volunteer based on the 20 minute response time? Which isn't that great but acceptable. Figure 2 minutes to be dispatched, 5 to get guys to the station, 3 to get the truck out the door and 10 minutes to get on scene. The cheif really couldn't do anything with an extingusher, as it was really to far gone at that point but he alone would not be allowed to enter the garage alone. For every 2 people you have inside you should have 2 people outside, ready to back your interior crew up. I'm not sure what they were doing with the hoses but the first engine should of pulled a line and started to use their tank water and then another engine tap the hydrant and pull line to establish a water supply for the first in engine. Ideally that should of happened. But nothing ever goes the way you want it to on a fire. Sorry if no one cares, and I really don't wana play monday morning quaterback since I wasn't there to watch.

Sorry to hear that man, I hope everything worked out for you.

You really need to pick up that towel in your driveway... just sayin :-)

Im just kidding.

Im just glad no one got hurt! A few lost possessions are much preferred to a lost life.