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| Three of these four photos show a car that burned up near my apartment. I saw this amazing sight one morning (around 9:10 am) when walking my dogs. I first noticed that the car was making a very strange, loud noise (it sounded like a belt scaping something so hard that the belt was wearing away). There were no flames, but steam was squirting out of both sides of the engine compartment (about three squirts per second, simultaneously on both sides, in perfect synchrony with the loud scraping noise). I brought my dogs to the grass on the other side of the apartment complex. When they were finished, and I walked back and again looked at the car, I could see small flames starting to appear below the car (it was oil or gas that was burning, surely.) I quickly put my two dogs back in my apartment, and took out my digital camera, and began taking photos. This photo on the left is one I took from the second floor balcony. |
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| The car that burned up near my apartment |
| photos by Jeff Opal, the top 3 taken 16-Aug-01 and the bottom one 17-Aug-01 |
| After taking the first photo, I decided to move farther away (while still on the 2nd floor balcony). I really like this photo, because it clearly shows how amazingly high the flames were. It appears as if the flames were around 7-8 feet high! This photo also vividly shows how much smoke was spewing up into the sky. |
| For some strange reason I decided to take this photo of the fire truck that arrived and put out the fire. It would have been a much better photo if I had waited until it stopped near the car, and especially if I had taken it as the firemen were putting out the fire. After the truck stopped, the firemen spent around a minute preparing a special hose (one not for squirting water, but for squirting a white foam). As soon as the hose was able to spray the white foam, they pulled it towards the car and let loose. The fire was put out so fast I could barely believe my eyes. (Five seconds total...maximum!) |
| This photo is one I took the next day. It clearly shows that the car was destroyed totally by the fire. I was fascinated by the look of its engine. It was full of holes...like swiss cheese. I also was fascinated to notice that the hood had apparently burned away...I found ashes of it that seemed to consist of a charred composite of fiberglass and strands of metal. Incidentally, this destroyed car was very useful for me as a place to release mice I've been capturing (using a live-catch trap) in my apartment. The danger from cats seemed to be minimized by all the great hiding places in this pile of junk. About three weeks later an article appeared in the Baton Rouge Advocate city paper about this car and seven other cars in Baton Rouge that had burned up. They were all one of three make/models. The story said that a faulty part (a cruise control switch) in these cars was causing the cars to spontaneously ignite when left parked in hot weather for several hours. The car maker has been trying to contact all owners of the three make/models of car, to inform them that they will replace the faulty part for free. The company has been having difficulty locating all the owners of these cars, which apparently explains why this car had not had the repair done yet. |
| Would this make a great paperweight? |