The lightbulb theory may not be as strongly held to as earlier stories suggest ~ but, of course, they'll have been reading the FR threads (since their data mining software continues to throw them up as newer comments come in).
Let's say she had the garage door open, and had been sitting there warming her car for a few minutes. Then, she backs out, cuts sharp right to wiggle around another car in the drive, and whacks the workbench which breaks up in some way and her radiator gets punched.
That heating coil around the catalytic converter has got to be toked up to working temperature of 1300 degrees F ~ so, the spray goes all over the place, but particularly UNDER THE CAR, and BANG ~ a ball of flame envelopes the car, and some spray has entered through the door vents so that goes off too, and her car comes to a halt as the engine dies.
In the meantime the garage catches fire (lots of old drystuff there).
It continues to stretch my imagination. This would be a very low speed incident. Cutting the wheel would likely make the front quarter panel make contact with the garage (not the front of the vehicle). They said she was “stricken and unconscious” when the fire started. I still can't find an example of a coolant spray leak in a car causing a fire, much less an explosion.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080118204643AAVoWfb
The only examples I have read about is when the water boils out of the system as in the case of the radiator cap being left off, and vapors building up under the hood.
I still think there was something other than coolant that was the trigger for the fire.
I have not seen the articles you mention. Any links would be appreciated.
I put some coolant in my Roundup sprayer, pumped it 25 times and sprayed it on a lit candle. It put the candle out every time and that was at 100% concentration. Granted the coolant was not at 220 degrees.