Posted on 01/15/2025 6:10:17 AM PST by Red Badger
A VW van sits among burned out homes, Jan. 9, 2025, in Malibu, Calif. Mark J. Terrill/AP Photo
Preston Martin figured the retro blue Volkswagen van he slept in for a year during college was a goner, given that he parked it in a Malibu neighborhood just before the Palisades fire ripped through, reducing homes and cars to rubble and charred metal.
So the surfboard maker was stunned to find that the vehicle survived. Not only that, a photo of the vibrant bus taken by an Associated Press photographer was circulating widely on television and online, giving viewers a measure of joy.
“There is magic in that van,” Martin, 24, said Tuesday in an interview with AP. “It makes no sense why this happened. It should have been toasted, but here we are.”
The neighborhood remains closed to the public, and neither Martin nor the friend and business partner to whom he sold the van last summer, Megan Krystle Weinraub, have been able to inspect the vehicle. In other photos of the van, it appears to have soot on its windows, Martin said.
Martin purchased the 1977 Volkswagen Type 2 somewhat on a whim sometime around his junior year studying mechanical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
His mother, Tracey Martin, of Irvine, yelled at him for blowing his money, but Martin told her he’d save on rent by fixing up the inside and living in it his senior year, which he did. She came to love the bus, and sewed curtains for the windows.
(Excerpt) Read more at theepochtimes.com ...
He could still live in it.
My neighbor sent me a text about a blue trash can (plastic) that survived everything around it being burned to a crisp
The text said (jokingly?) about the DEW not working on blue objects - it was a meme someone else had made that was circulating
Down by the river.
Isn’t that like the Lahaina phenomenon floating around?
The horror of that landscape - it looks like a World War II napalm raid ...
Exactly the same, only more expensive real estate.............
VW Micro Buses go For Crazy money now,
Bugs too.
The new RETRO models just came out and they look cool..............
Magic Bus
I suspect that blue trash can was BLOWN there after the fire was past it’s height.
It in now famous!.................
Yep! There’s magic in that van!
Retro Blue VW Van Miraculously Survives Deadly Los Angeles Fire
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so did the maroon truck directly
below the van at bottom of picture
That was almost a fried-out Kombi.
“”so did the maroon truck directly below the van at bottom of picture””
Hard to see if there is damage to that because of the color but I, for one am not believing that the VW escaped the fire that went across the road - with tires not touched either? The VW could have been parked there AFTER the fire - who took a picture from that angle to catch the VW?
The first inventors of automobiles had no idea of the magnitude of the revolution they were starting.
His head must have been full of zombie..............
I lived in one just like that during the 1982/83 winter in Lake Tahoe. Same color too!
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