Car Aflame

Aflame! Sorry but I do not mean an excited car out here. lol.

I witnessed a car burning in flames last night when going to meet a friend. It was just about 200 meters from the car when I, riding on my motor cycle, was signaled by a medium built guy to stop. At first I thought it might be another mugger as it was already about 10 pm and there are rarely any people on that road. But I slowed down and the guy screamed out not to go ahead as there is a car burning, fearing it might burst at any moment. I stopped and watched the blaze. It was mainly in the bonnet while some streaks of fire could be seen at the bottom of the car as well. For a moment I watched how serious it was. Was it by some miscreants or was it an accident? There were a host of other people and vehicles lined up at a safe distance while further frantic calls were being made by the same guy who signaled at me to stop other approaching vehicles. After a while I started at full throttle, wore my helmet and raced past the blazing car. At the same time when I was starting, a mini fire truck wailed beside me and parked just crossing the car. As I reached a possibly safe distance, I could imagine a sigh of relief in the watching small group.

I returned back through the same road after some time and could see that the situation was back to normal. This time again, I stopped and walked near the vehicle to have a look at the damage. There were some 6-7 people with the car this time, 2-3 of them discussing possibly about the dealer of the car, damage compensation etc. On asking one guy standing beside, he told me that the engine just caught fire, possibly overheating or some electrical glitch somewhere.

The car was a brand new Tata Indica GLS. This was a live sight I had witnessed after reading stories of 3 such car fires in the local newspapers in last 2 months.