Ashlin's car caught on fire soon after she left our house thursday...
SHORT VERSION of story:
All she saw was some smoke, her and I thought it was just over-heating. So she left it on the side of the road, and came home to get my car. Luckily someone in the neighborhood called 911...
before it exploded.
It burned a hole up through the dash board, you can see the charred window, and set off the driver air bag. The firefighters sprayed the car interior down with foam, which is all over the floor in the pictures.
LONG VERSION:
SETTING: Yesterday (thursday) I just walked in the door from driving kids around for 1 hour and 20 minutes (to and from football, violin, bank to pay violin teacher, piano). Sophie was screaming crying, and I had 15 minutes before I had to leave again to pick up my friends kids we were watching over night. I put Sophie in her bed, and was trying to clean Lily and her room quickly before the company came... and Ashlin left the house to stop by someone in the wards house (she was taking care of their pets for them while they were out of town)...
on her way to work.
Then within minutes of Ashlin leaving the house she called me stressed out saying her car was smoking. It has over-heated once before, so I figured it was engine problems. I didn't know what to do, so I said, "just leave it there (she was right down our street) and dad will be home in 20 minutes to look at it, walk home and get my car." TRUTH: I was tired of being in the car, and didn't want to drive down there, because I was focused on having only 15 minutes to clean up this big mess. She said ok, came home and got my car. But then when she drove back by her car, she called me again and said, "Mom- there are a bunch of people standing around my car and its still smoking" So I asked if it was smoking more or less, and she said less. But she was only noticing the smoke coming out of the car hood, the entire car at the point was filled with smoke. So I said we would check on it,
and she kept driving to get to her appt.
I sent Dallin to run down and check on it, because Ashlin now had my car. And I was home with Lily and Sophie. My neighbor was leaving his driveway at that moment. So I called his cell as he was leaving, and said, "Hey- would you just look at my daughters car as you drive by it and let me know if you think I need to go down there" I was still thinking the engine was having problems that made it smoke and once the car was off, that would be fine to wait until Bruce got home in like 20 minutes. And he said, "Well there is a fire truck and 2 police cars all there around her car". I was like WHAT?!!
Never did I think the car was on fire.
As he was telling me that my other line rang... and it was Dallin calling me from the police officers cell phone telling me I needed to get down there. Then the police got on the phone and said, "Do you have the keys to this car? We need them right away to get in, the doors are locked" Dallin ran back for the keys, while I ran towards them with them. The police officer kept asking how far away I was, saying to me, "Maam- you need to get us these keys fast, and we might not be able to wait. We are going to have to start breaking these windows to get in the car, because we can already hear popping from the hood"
Like he was afraid the car was going to blow up.
So Dallin got the keys there in time, right before I got there. Luckily my neighbor/cousin Emily was out front, and I yelled to her as I was running down the street, "Lily and Sophie are home alone,
will you keep an eye on my house?!"
There were like 2 police officers and 6 fire fighters there. Dallin told me when he was there without me the fire fighter was interrogating him about Ashlin and why his older sister would leave her car on the side of the road on fire and take off. He was asking him if she was a chain smoker. When Dallin got there at first, there was just a police car and some guys from the neighborhood there with a fire extinguisher. They are the ones who called 911, thank goodness.
Then the fire truck got there.
When I got there the police officer was kind of mad, and telling me it looked really suspicious that my daughter would take off and leave her car there on fire. I was SO embarrassed. And told him I told her to. That neither of us knew what to do. She did not know it was on fire, and had only seen smoke. I called her and told her to get back immediately. Then the cop yelled at her too.
I was so shocked it was on fire. She was only in the car 1 minute,
she had just left our house.
They found the cause of the fire. It was an electrical fire, a sterio wire. We had bought the car from the Auto Trader from some college kid, it was like $2000. He had installed a nice sterio himself. Well, the wire he used wasn't to code and encased in whatever safety thing, and it caught fire... was totally burned up. The fireman showed it to me and said the fire started under the gas pedal,
and burned up through the dash board.
So lame that it happened. So annoying it was from a sterio wire that kid didn't do correctly. But SO thankful Ashlin was ok. So thankful it happened so close to home so she pulled over immediately. That night when Ashlin said our family prayer, she was really shaken up and cried. She felt really dumb earlier, she didn't realize it was something so serious, but was also so thankful she wasn't harmed.
We obviously were too.
Who knew earlier in the day when Sophie and I were sending funny texts to Bruce about all the BAT-Facts we were learning in the documentary we watched that we had such a DRAMA ahead.
