We were finishing dinner when Dawn thought that she smelled something burning. My brother in law, Glen, and I just thought it was poor quality fuel in the torpedo style heater warming up the garage (he was over to repair transmission problems in his car). We went out to the garage to investigate, and it was quite smoky. I opened up the garage door to ventilate the garage, and Glen saw fire under the hood! I yelled inside to Dawn, "CALL 911, we have a car fire!". I grabbed the fire extinguisher from the workbench, and instructed Glen to get the other extinguisher from downstairs near the fireplace. Emptying my fire extinguisher did no good. neither did Glen's. So I went to the kitchen and made a futile effort emptying the extinguisher stored there. It was obvious that the car was too close to the house, so I decided to push back. Opening the driver's door, I reached in to put the car in neutral. I was driven back by the smoke. I coughed a lot due to the smoke, took a big breath and went in one more time, popped the car into neutral, and pushed the car back with all my might. I almost pushed the car too far into the street, but did get it stopped in time. From then on I just enjoyed the fire, and the sirens from the approaching police cars and fire trucks. All the while counting my blessings, of which there are many to be had. (Dawn's note--at least the house didn't catch fire!!) Glen made a valiant effort throwing snow on it, but it made little difference. I knew that the fire was just too advanced to even bother.
Here are a few shots that Dawn took of the whole event.
When I said flame job, this is not what I had in mind!
The SLP-B-MV fire department trying to get the hood open. They finally had to use the Jaws
of Life to pry it open!
Putting out the last of the flame. The fuel line burned, and the leaking fuel fed the
fire. The firemen finally crimped off the metal portion of the fuel line to stop the
leaking gasoline. The fire chief could not say for sure what the cause of the fire was. He
officially put down "unknown" as the cause.
As you can see, the car was totaled.
Inside and out.
Click to see the Vehicle build order. I believe this is the document used on the assembly
line to assemble the car. I found this one under tha passenger seat, and another one
behind the drivers door trim panel.
This car had almost every option available. We were looking forward to many years of comfortable service. It's too bad we lost it. It's also quite fortunate we didn't lose the house! We only owned the car for something less than 5,000 miles. We purchased it in early December with 128,000 miles. Today is January 23rd, 1998 and the car has about 130,000 miles. Power windows, seats (yes, both driver and passenger seats), rear wiper / defog. AM stereo - FM stereo - cassette radio, interior lighting package, trailer towing package, woodgrain, wire wheelcovers and more! In short, a really nice car. The car sat down at the end of the driveway, awaiting final disposition. It even earned us a nasty letter from our fine city because it sat for so long (under 30 days!).
Thanks for reading.
All photos Copyright 1998, Dawn Holmberg. All rights reserved
Click for Dan's AMC Adventures!
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