Posted on 07/17/2015 7:24:13 PM PDT by Second Amendment First
A swiftly moving brush fire in Southern California forced the closing of all lanes of a crowded freeway, stranded some motorists and spurred others to abandon their vehicles as flames engulfed roughly a dozen cars and trucks.
Live video broadcast by a local CBS affiliate showed firefighters moving between empty vehicles on Interstate 15 in Cajon Pass, Calif., as motorists filed down the shoulder of the freeway in San Bernardino County.
A black pillar of smoke rose into the sky as cars, pickup trucks, a tractor-trailer and a car carrier loaded with empty vehicles burned.
The fire information line, to which the National Forest Service directed media requests, said that the blaze began at 2:33 p.m., and that all lanes of Interstate 15 were closed.
The San Bernardino County Fire Department posted on Twitter that the flames had “jumped” Interstate 15 in the Cajon Pass and had spread across at least 500 acres of land. It warned motorists to remain in their vehicles because water dropped from fire-fighting aircraft “can severely injure you,” although local media reported that some people were fleeing their cars.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Quite a mess. Fortunately no one killed. The trip to Vegas this Friday will be most unpleasant.
What the heck is a “car carrier loaded with empty vehicles”?
Overall, a very bad situation for the stranded drivers. Stay and burn or run and burn.
That section is at least eight lanes! Wow
A truck delivering new cars is one example.
the cars had no drivers. usually the case..
A Jeb Bush caused fire?
This happen only a few miles from where I was posting about car fire last June. And the south bound traffic was backed up past where the overpass brunt down about a year and a half ago. So I put my repost here.
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Here is the whole car story so far.
I am really blessed.
Monday when I came home from work the traffic wasn’t really bad. . The highway construction only delayed me about 15 minutes on my 50 plus mile commute home. The spot on the road where my car chooses to catch fire was probably one of the safest places for me to pull over. Because of this location I was able to avoid causing an traffic jam. It was easy to pull over to the side of the exit ramp before the fire in the engine compartment caused by car to stall.
If the car stalled in traffic lane on the off ramp it would most likely have cause a big traffic jam and been in the local newspaper. Embarrassing!
If it had caught fire in the construction zone on the I-15 south around Devore it would have caused a huge traffic jam and would most certainly been big enough to get the LA area news with helicopters out to film for the nightly news. Really embarrassing!
If the car was close enough to the dry brush not far from the freeway it could most definitely have cause a fire in the San Bernardino National Forest. Fire season in California officially starts around May 15 as I remember So it was very possible that the car fire could have cause a major brush fire and it absolutely could have made national news. Majorly embarrassing!
Well unless a Hollywood movie star got a pimple on their butt and was taken to the hospital. That would most likely preempt it.
But it was near the end of a freeway off ramp just a little less than a mile from my house. The local Olive Garden Restaurant was just across the off ramp fence. I had just cleaned out all the junk in my car so I had time to grab my phone and other stuff out of the front seat. It was also close enough so my parents who live in town could come and pick me at a Carl’s Jr. There was nothing nearby to catch fire and cause collateral damage. All that remained was a blacked smug on the shoulder of the freeway. I don’t think it will even make the local paper. Cool!
One of the ladies in the local real estate office that is selling my rental home saw it when she drove by. My parents came and picked me up and we went by their house so I could barrow one of their cars so I could get to work the next day. I got a rental car Tuesday after work. And to make it even better I got the renewal for the registration in the mail today! Registration is high in California and was about $250. The car was a total loss so I don’t need to pay!
It was a Ford Escape 2013 that I only got it last February and it only had about 60.000 miles on it at the time of the fire. I found out from the insurance company that this model has a history of catching fire. Well in the end I got home about the same time as I usually do if I meet someone for dinner on my way home. We did go through a drive-thru on the way to my parents’ house so I did get to go out to dinner!
Life is good! God is good.
I see many car carriers here in LA sometimes with no vehicles, no clue why but its very common..and along that stretch of highway(Which takes you to Vegas from Los Angeles) is always jam packed with Fed Ex trucks and other kinds of vehicles carrying cargo
A “car carrier loaded with empty vehicles” is one where vehicles are loaded with illegal aliens getting an illegal free ride!
Plenty of abandoned vehicles, some of them charred.
Trying to outrun that fire on foot must have been exactly no fun.
I'll tell you...
They've delivered their load and are going back for more...
Great photo. Shows the enormity of it. Thank you for posting.
Freeways have always given me a form of claustrophobia; no escape. Seeing news footage yesterday validated my feelings.
So essentially it could have been phrased “loaded car carrier”.
Those folks were very lucky they were not burned.
I remember a fire truck on a West Hills/Canoga Park fire road (San Fernando valley, CA) that was over taken by a brush fire that came up a hill and passed over the road.
It blew out the trucks windows right away and the fireman received burns.
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