Rude awakening prompts resident to report car on fire

ST. GEORGE — Exploding tires awakened a resident who looked outside to find a car on fire early Thursday morning.

The resident called 911 to report a car on fire in the parking lot of a condominium complex in the area of 55 East 700 South.

“I believe what they heard was the front tires blowing out due to the heat from the fire,” St. George Fire Battalion Chief Darrell Imlay said.

Firefighters arrived within four minutes of being paged to find the vehicle fully engulfed in flames. They were able to extinguish the fire quickly with the engine and crew that were first to arrive, he said.

The fire appeared to have started in the engine compartment, he said, but burned quickly, spreading well into the interior of the vehicle by the time crews arrived.

“The car was totaled and part of the reason the fire caused so much damage is that it started in the middle of the night and had time to burn, until the tires blew and woke somebody up,”  Imlay said.

The driver told fire crews he parked the car approximately an hour earlier and had no idea it had caught fire until they arrived.

Imlay went on to say that it was obvious the fire started in or near the engine, but finding the cause was virtually impossible because it had burned for so long before it was discovered, causing damage so extensive it removed any evidence of its origin.

The blaze did not spread to any other vehicles or nearby structures, and no injuries were reported.

The St. George Fire Department initially responded with multiple engines, but all were canceled after the fire was quickly contained and extinguished.

This report is based on statements from police or other emergency responders and may not contain the full scope of findings.

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Twitter: @STGnews

Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2017, all rights reserved.

 

 

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