Late this afternoon I was driving along the M3 listening to Cape Talk when I smelt an odd smell, did a bit more sniffing and the vague thought struck me that it smelt electrical. A few minutes later smoke was coming out the dashboard. Even a complete mechanical idiot like me realised this can’t be right. I put my hazards on and moved across the road to park on the shoulder, a lot more smoke was now coming out. I had visions of the car blowing up around me so I grabbed my handbag and bailed.
Conversation to Wouter went like this:
Me: I think my car is on fire.
Wouter: Oh dear, why?
Me: Smoke’s coming out the dashboard.
So I stood on the side of the road, in the shade of a tree, waiting for Wouter to arrive and watched the smoke fill the car. It’s a bit of a depressing sight really – watching your car deteriorate before your eyes. When Wouter arrived I popped the hood for him to see what was going on, in opening the door the oxygen caused the fire to accelerate, so now we had flames as well as smoke. A quick phonecall to 10111 and the fire brigade were on their way.
Whilst waiting for the fire brigade a friendly good samaritan stopped and gave us his fire extinguisher – Wouter used that but by then it was too late.
A tow truck guy arrived, friendly chap. A volunteer fire fighter arrived, also a friendly chap. Fire medical rescue chaps arrived, again friendly. Eventually the fire engine pitched up (they’d got a little lost… miss-communication) quite a few chaps and a couple of gals, all very friendly.
I stood and watched my car being drowned in water, the dashboard pulled apart and more drowning (see Wouter’s blog for pictures).
*sigh*
R.I.P
P.S. I don’t have any nice pics of the car but thought this one was cute.
Tomorrow is phone the insurance company day.