Car Ablaze

At a little before 23:00 today the usual quiet tranquility (well, general calm in any case) in my little part of the world was broken with something that seemed to be an explosion.  A loud bang and the general boom of a pressure wave, a small one, but still enough to rattle the door. My initial reaction was that someone in the house had either fallen out of bed, dropped something heavy or slammed a door, those are after all the most common causes of loud noises at night.

After checking taking a look around the house and finding nothing out of place, I was all but ready to assume that the neighbour’s had somehow made a loud noise, not something I can ever remember having noticed before (I hope they can say the same for me, although I have a feeling I may be wrong…), but I thought a brief look outside would be sensible, just in case something had fallen off (it is a couple of hundred years old after all).

Still Ablaze

To my surprise, rather than finding a couple of slates on the floor I noticed a glow down the road, and then a rather audible pop.  Dashing through the garden a number of thoughts ran through my head, was there a house on fire (although the initial explosion hadn’t seemed quite that large) or maybe one of the factories or gas storage facilities in the valley had caught light (far enough away for any noise to be muted).

As I rounded the garden wall and looked down the street I saw something that I hadn’t expected, a large ball of fire engulfing a large car about 200 yards down the road.

A Fire Fighter Tackles The Blaze

My initial reaction was to call the Fire Service and Police, my second was to grab the half charged batteries out of their charging cradle, scrabble for a CF card, grab the camera and join the 10-15 or so other people who had by now gathered to watch to see if I could get some decent photographs of what was happening.  As the car had burned the windows had blown out, scattering glass easily 100 yards up the road, it had also rolled further down the hill, leaving burned rubber as testament to where it had sat initially.

The prevailing theory amongst those that gathered, without any police confirmation at the time, was that the car had been dumped after it had been stolen and used for joyriding.  Why they chose to dump the car on our street is unclear (although yesterday the police did chase a joyrider down the same street…).  I just hope that it isn’t an indication that the area will become more popular for thieves to dump their stolen vehicles.

Burned Out Interior

I was impressed quite how fast the fire was brought under control, even if the Fire Brigade appeared to have managed to turn up to the wrong street… and how fast the burned out wreckage was recovered (2 hours is quite snappy in my book).  Although I am not sure that the police gave the incident as much attention as they might have, spending most of their time in their car and then conversing with the firefighters.  Of course I suppose there isn’t much they could do.  No one seems to have seen the car arrive, nor see anyone leave it, a shame considering that given how close to houses the vehicle was dumped (a matter of a pavement width)  and the obvious danger it could have posed to the occupants.

Car Recovered

So allin all an eventful evening, not one that I would hope to see repeated soon, but at least it has reminded me that I should have my camera and other gear ready and waiting all the time, rather than just when I am planning to use it.

For those interested there are some high-res images of the event on my flickr photostream.