Crazy fire outside my home 🔥
So something crazy happened outside my home on Sunday night...which led me to worry about my car.
Soooo...let's start with the beginning. It was around 12:30 AM on Sunday night (well already Monday I guess) when I was in my bedroom chit-chatting with my brother when we heard a loud bang. At first, I thought it was our neighbors in the car park outside our windows making the loud noises. I assumed someone accidentally hit a car with those large green dumpsters. Honest I did thought it was strange to move any dumpster that night since trash day wasn't until one more day. Roughly a minute later another loud bang was heard followed by a man shouting "Water, Water, Water!", but both my brother and I just ignored it under the assumption our neighbors were messing around. Boy was I wrong.
After hearing all that I just proceeded to my bathroom to clean up and get ready for bed. But right when I legit just put my toothbrush in my mouth to brush my mom was knocking on the bathroom door saying something was happened to my car and there was some sort of fire outside. At this point, I was slightly panicking, but trying to stay calm while still having toothpaste in my mouth. I was just thinking "fuck...my car is electric and now everyone, from my neighbors to my family, is going to start criticizing me for deciding to buy an EV. Just a side note, my family members are very wary about EV. They've considered alternatives such as hybrids, but I'm the first to have a fully electric car. After my mom told me I quickly spat out the toothpaste, not even rinsing my mouth with water, and screamed "What the fuck" while running into my room to find my phone to call 911.
While panicking I was trying to find where the heck I placed my phone. My brother just proceeded to hand me his phone to call. Immediately, I called 911 while running down the stairs to head outside barefoot. I told the dispatcher it was my car that was on fire and that it was electric. When the address was given to them, they said they were on their way and sure enough right as I headed outside the firetrucks were approaching. Luckily, the fire station is just about a 5 minute drive away down a couple of blocks.
Both my brother and I ran outside together, but he was the first to see the fire. About 30 seconds later I saw the fire after I turned around the wall of my home. It was then I realized it WASN'T MY CAR AFTER ALL! It was a neighbor's car. At this point, I placed my hand on my chest and felt relieved. Sucks for my neighbor, but as long as it wasn't mine I stopped feeling slight guilt for the fire. When I saw the scene it was like a fireball engulfing the entire car.
Before seeing the car and as soon as I went outside a bystander was outside asking my brother to help getting a hose to water down the fire. I was going to thank the guy before realized the car on fire wasn't mine. Both my brother and I went back into our home about 5 minutes later after we saw bystanders assisting with the fire and the fire department approaching. There was nothing else we could do at that point besides stand there was watch, but there were better things to do.
A little later that night I was looking through my driveway camera's footage to see if the fire was recorded, but sadly nothing as it was out of frame, and even if it was it wasn't in the camera's detection zone for it to save a recording. However, I did see several clips of when the camera was recording and the first was at 12:40 AM when a few bystanders were outside noticing the fire. In a particular clip, I saw a lady with a fire extinguisher and another guy looking for water. One lady told the guy to stay away from the fire, but he wanted to help and yelled at her saying, "I know what I'm doing," which I thought was quite funny. Thinking about it now, I think the fire department told them to stay back and don't mess with the fire which led to the lady trying to stop the guy from doing anything.
In another clip, my brother could be seen running to see the fire with nothing on, but boxers and yelling "What the fuck" repeatedly then proceeding to run back to the house. At this point, he could've at least told me it wasn't my car since he saw it before me.
When we were all back inside the house I told my mom I thought it was my car, but she said she didn't know and to be fair she hadn't gone outside yet. She told me our landlord knocked on our backyard door to move the cars due to a fire and she understood it as it being my car that's on fire.
This whole time I felt a sense of slight guilt and tried to stay as calm as possible when my car was unaffected. I didn't want to feel guilty if my car had been the cause of the fire. Luckily, no one was hurt to my knowledge and the cause of the fire is unknown to me.
Here are some images of the aftermath.
