This weekend while driving in Pasadena I turned the corner and saw a plume of smoke. An SUV in a parking lot had flames erupting from the hood. No one was visible anywhere nearby
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I have pulled over to fight a brush fire. As did three other people.
Which doesn't actually count, of course, but it did seem like a good idea at the time, and the firefighters thought it was pretty cool that a couple of us actually had fire extinguishers.
It was in the oleanders in the empty lot across from the convenience store on the corner near my house in North Las Vegas.
So there was some self-interest involved.
But you know. Brush fire! How often does that happen?
(I'm pretty sure somebody flicked a cigarette out the window into the desert lot, and it smoldered in the roots for days before bursting forth in two-foot flames and billows of smoke. Some people.)
My one flaming vehicle was something I saw while speeding like the dickens somewhere on the network of highways around New York City. It was dusk, and that tricky part of dusk when your eyes just feel dim but you're not smart enough to turn your lights on yet, and I whipped past a flaming elderly shmoozemobile pulled over by the side of an exit.
I know I was speeding because (a) I saw it and it was gone, that fast; and (b) sitting right next to it was a police car and I was so going to be busted. Except that there was a car on fire and that was more important.
...But I had to look for it in my rearview to make sure my mind wasn't playing tricks on me. Except for the whole property-destruction-and-mayhem, kind of a lovely weird liminal experience.
Yeah. Totally surreal. Mythology aside, cars don't really burn all that much.
I have seen them twice. Both times alongside highways. (Actually, one was immediately post-burning.)
However, there was a fatal head-on collision a block from my old house (in the same intersection where I had the brush fire experience, synchronistically!) where both cars burst into flames, and a bystander managed to pull one of the drivers (the drunk who caused the accident, so it happens) to safety. The passengers in the other car died.
Rachel, does smoke count? Because I was caught in a massive traffic jam once (also in Vegas) when a tanker truck rolled over under a bridge overpass and burned. I never actually saw the fire, but everybody in southern Nevada saw the plume... *g*
I picked 3 rather than 1 in response to the first question because I've mostly been in post-war and near-war zones rather than war zones as such. So I've seen burnt-out vehicles, but never any that were in the actual process of burning.
In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a non-deliberate, non-controlled fire in person, leaving aside tiny things like flaming pans in kitchens. I've dealt with some reasonably dramatic situations including arterial bleeding (not my own), but fire and I don't seem to be drawn to each other.
I was walking the dog a few months ago and spotted a car where the windows were... weirdly foggy. Yellow-brown fog, and I realized after a minute that the car was on fire. So I banged on the house door several times, no response, eventually found a neighbor to call 911. When the fire truck showed up, THEN the owner of the car came to the door--he'd been sleeping upstairs and somehow hadn't heard the fuss.
Yep, the only burning car I've seen was off the 580 in Oakland. That's also the same stretch of road where someone threw a milkshake out their window and it hit my windshield. I love the East Bay.
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Which doesn't actually count, of course, but it did seem like a good idea at the time, and the firefighters thought it was pretty cool that a couple of us actually had fire extinguishers.
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So there was some self-interest involved.
But you know. Brush fire! How often does that happen?
(I'm pretty sure somebody flicked a cigarette out the window into the desert lot, and it smoldered in the roots for days before bursting forth in two-foot flames and billows of smoke. Some people.)
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I know I was speeding because (a) I saw it and it was gone, that fast; and (b) sitting right next to it was a police car and I was so going to be busted. Except that there was a car on fire and that was more important.
...But I had to look for it in my rearview to make sure my mind wasn't playing tricks on me. Except for the whole property-destruction-and-mayhem, kind of a lovely weird liminal experience.
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I have seen them twice. Both times alongside highways. (Actually, one was immediately post-burning.)
However, there was a fatal head-on collision a block from my old house (in the same intersection where I had the brush fire experience, synchronistically!) where both cars burst into flames, and a bystander managed to pull one of the drivers (the drunk who caused the accident, so it happens) to safety. The passengers in the other car died.
Rachel, does smoke count? Because I was caught in a massive traffic jam once (also in Vegas) when a tanker truck rolled over under a bridge overpass and burned. I never actually saw the fire, but everybody in southern Nevada saw the plume... *g*
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In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a non-deliberate, non-controlled fire in person, leaving aside tiny things like flaming pans in kitchens. I've dealt with some reasonably dramatic situations including arterial bleeding (not my own), but fire and I don't seem to be drawn to each other.
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Interesting and unsettling both.
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