On Fire

As I was leaving work today (I work in a medical office) I was a little nervous because there was a young man standing in the middle of the exit yelling and cursing into his cellphone. He sounded like he was totally flipping out- not something you want to encounter when you're leaving a building by yourself into a dark parking lot. A couple co-workers came up behind me and we went out together. They stopped. I could smell an odd smell but was anxious to get home because I had some errands to run after dinner. I warily watched the young man who had moved about halfway across the parking lot of the building next door. He was still shouting into his phone, waving his free arm. I got into the brand new rental car I picked up last night after dropping my SUV off for a tear down to remove a rodent infestation- one of the joys of living in the woods, not having a garage, and a vehicle Toyota acknowledges has no barriers to prevent such a thing from happening between the engine compartment and dashboard.

As I began to back out of the space slowly two of my other coworkers flew into the parking space to my right and bailed out of their van, walking quickly back toward the employee door. I turned my head to see what in the world was going on- thinking maybe there'd been some sort of confrontation between two patients in the parking lot or something. As my eyes traveled back to the strange car parking in a restricted employee area I noticed the hood was up...and out of the engine compartment there were flames shooting higher than the upright hood! That explained the odd "hot" smell and all the shouting wildly into the phone and my co-workers all bunched together at the door. Vehicle fire!

Great! I was parked a couple spaces to the right. Time to leave! I backed out, paused to check to be sure the fire department was on the way since the car was under a tree and it was windy. Through the open door I could see one of the practitioners rushing down the hallway because his car was two spaces to the left of the burning vehicle!

It was kind of a slow and uneventful day at work since it was a holiday. But the 5PM rush to head home was certainly exciting!

Around 6:20PM Kelly and I drove by and there were no cars at all in the lot so I guess the fire was put out, the vehicle was towed and everyone was able to go home safely. The building was still standing and so was the tree (although it's possible it might be a little toasted here and there!)