{"id":10890,"date":"2019-03-15T02:12:02","date_gmt":"2019-03-15T02:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jwjphotoblog.com\/?p=10890"},"modified":"2019-03-15T03:22:49","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T03:22:49","slug":"car-fire-hwy-185-south-near-hwy-a-march-12th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jwjphotoblog.com\/?p=10890","title":{"rendered":"Car Fire Hwy 185 South near Hwy A March 12th"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tuesday morning, March 12th, I was doing some work on my computer when I heard Sullivan Fire Department`s tones drop for a MVA, tractor trailer off the roadway, at the 230 exit of I-44 EB, Stanton Exit. I heard Chief Eric respond with Pumper 854 and dispatch advised him they were taking a call for a car fire at Hwy 185 south and Hwy A, began wondering who was going to take that call when I heard Jimmy Smythe key up the radio and advise Chief Eric he would respond momentarily in Pumper 834 to the car fire, and thought he had firefighters responding with him. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Onyx and I headed to the car fire as well and we arrived about ten minutes later, not far behind the pumper. As I was approaching and passing Hwy K, I started seeing heavy black smoke about a mile ahead. By this time I was behind a semi dump truck and as we approached I spotted the sedan on the north side of the highway in a pullout spot, fully involved, heavy black smoke rolling across the partially blocked highway….I pulled past the pumper that was spotted in the northbound lane facing southbound, then saw Jimmy pulling the pre-connect hoseline and stretching it out. I parked in the wide spot on Hwy A at the intersection of Hwy 185, locked Onyx inside the truck and loped down to the pumper, where JImmy was packing up…the small sedan fully involved behind the truck….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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I walked up to Jimmy and asked him where his crew was…he said he was it…I was shocked and I`m fairly sure it showed on my face…so I asked him if he needed any help…he said sure, told him I would run the pump and help him out as much as I could, he had already set the pump at 125 psi on the hose, I asked him if he wanted to keep the pressure at that setting and he said he would start with that and let me know….he finished packing up and headed to the nozzle…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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and then I shot some video from pumpside at the truck….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and soon it looked like he had a quick knockdown of the heavy fire and smoke….as I was taking a few photos, I talked to the driver of the car who was standing there as well, he said his son had just joined the fire department as a new junior firefighter, he had just dropped his wife off at work and he was returning home to check the car, which had been acting up in the past week. He noticed black smoke from the rear exhaust pipe and as he pulled into the spot off the highway there, flames began coming up thru the floorboard at his feet, as he exited the car.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…the flames on both sides of the car kept him hopping back and forth a bit….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…he then moved in to concentrate on the dashboard console a bit more……<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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and….BOOM…fireworks ensued…roman candles appeared to be shooting everywhere in every direction !!….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…apparently the steering column was made of magnesium, which when burning, reacts violently with water, creating a nice 4th of July type fireworks display, looks like Roman Candles firing off in all directions from the car….I shot these photos and could not switch to video fast enough to capture those rockets….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…the later half of this video above was the first indication to me that there was fuel in the gravel underneath the car that was re-igniting the car, can tell from the behavior of the flames quickly moving from rear to front of car close to Jimmy in the video…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Pretty soon Jimmy moved back to the other side of the car and tried to get to the flames underneath the car…flames came up on the other side of the car and appeared be dancing at times…obviously fed by the leaking fuel….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…how wild is that ???!!!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and soon the fire began to spread under the front of the car and take off again due to the fuel re-igniting the car once again….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…then spread and ignited the rear of the car too….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…I was beginning to wonder if we were going to have to switch over to foam and trying to remember how the foam system worked with this pumper…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…Jimmy stayed with it, pushing back as much as he could, then switched to the other side of the car once again and hit it hard there too…..<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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He took a break and walked over to check the water level in the tank, asked me to drop the pressure a little bit, so I brought it down to 90 lbs pressure on the line…told me the gas tank was leaking under the back seat and he couldn`t reach it with the stream of water….he then returned to the line and hit it hard again….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and soon after, Damon Sumpter and his crew on Pumper 854, followed by Chief Eric, came around the corner on Hwy 185, and arrived to help finish extinguishing the car fire that refused to go out….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…the car was re-igniting on the drivers side by the rear door once again as Pumper 854 pulled up and positioned in the northbound lane….Damon`s crew jumped out and walked up to Jimmy who took a short break and then began to hit it once again…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and a few minutes later, had it knocked down once again….he and Gary opened hood to take a look at the engine compartment…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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A Washington County Sheriffs Deputy arrived and parked in front of Pumper 834, checked with the driver about a wrecker and made arrangements with him to pickup the car at a later time since it was off the road. As I was getting ready to head back to town, Jimmy thanked me for the help, told him it was not a problem at all, brought back lots of memories. Once a firefighter, always a firefighter….in my humble opinion.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Tuesday morning, March 12th, I was doing some work on my computer when I heard Sullivan Fire Department`s tones drop for a MVA, tractor trailer off the roadway, at the 230 exit of I-44 EB, Stanton Exit. I heard Chief … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fires-2019"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jwjphotoblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jwjphotoblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jwjphotoblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jwjphotoblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jwjphotoblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10890"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.jwjphotoblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10958,"href":"http:\/\/www.jwjphotoblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10890\/revisions\/10958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jwjphotoblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jwjphotoblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jwjphotoblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}