Carbeque at my house

The days were winding down to Father’s day, and I was thinking about what I’d get him this year.

Top on my list was buying Dad a charcoal grill so I could do some backyard barbequing.

Little did I know that I was in for a different type of cook out.

June 14th on the way home I stopped and gassed up my Liberty. On that evening Mom and Dad was at church, and I went straight down to the basement. I had barely settled in when I heard a loud knock on the door. The first thing that came to my mind was that Fed-Ex was at the house dropping off a package.

When I opened the back door no one was there. My eyes scanned the driveway for a vehicle, and to my disbelief I saw flames shooting out from under my vehicle’s hood. This was just an awful feeling. I couldn’t imagine that this was as bad as it looked, but with out a doubt my vehicle was going up in flames.

I looked towards the beginning of my driveway and noticed that several vehicles were parked with 7 or 8 people looking at what was happening. One of these individuals told me that he had knocked on my door and had called the fire department. I talked with him for a while, and as suggested by someone I ran to the house for our fire extinguisher. The extinguisher didn’t even make a difference in the hot fire. I didn’t dare getting very close because my vehicle could be just an instant from an explosion.

The fire was very close to our garage. I could see that most of the siding was melted off, and there was a dark semi circular pattern on the heated up shingles. I went into the garage because I knew that there was a gas can quite close to the large garage door. About the time that I reached the can the first explosion rung. I could feel the hot blast. I quickly moved the can and exited the garage.

The vehicle exploded 2 more times, but the gas tank did not take off thankfully. Minutes later the fire department arrived. They quickly unrolled their hose and from a distance doused the hood of the Liberty. When the flames abated someone pried the hood open and washed it out completely. Eventually the smoke was no more.

Sometime during this my very concerned parents arrived home. Dad asked me what happened, and I could only say that I was not sure. He told me that they saw dark smoke rolling over the tree tops from a long distance away.

The firemen tore down the front soffit to make sure that none of the fire caught inside of the garage.

As I removed the items from my Jeep I just about gagged in the awful stench, my lungs actually ached. I talked with the firemen and thanked them for the work they did in saving our garage.

I remembered a trip out to Fresno a couple years ago to visit my brother. When we were on the road there was a gas station where we noticed a vehicle who’s hood was engulfed in flames. I made a little joke “Looks like their having a carbeque”. This time around the carbeque was at my house.