What to do when your car catches fire (on the way to Glastonbury)

by Tamsin Hemingray in Your car on 03.07.08

Gosh, I genuinely don’t know where to start with this post. This time last week I was packing a funnel into the top of my already bulging rucksack, washing off my wellies and preparing for a weekend of amazing music and outlandish experiences at Glastonbury 2008. Sadly, despite my well-laid plans and proper preparation, I hadn’t bargained for a little quirk of fate that left my two little sisters and I stood on the hard shoulder of the M4 at 6.30am, staring at the steaming remains of our car (below) and pondering the big “what if?” question.

It took just under 10 minutes from the time we first heard a strange clicking noise in the engine whenever my sister accelerated above 50mph, to the three of us standing in shock and disbelief watching as our car turned into a fireball and its windows shattered out on to the tarmac. The vehicle, hired from an ostensibly reliable Battersea firm, had apparently suffered an electrical fire in the engine, so the (very lovely) fireman who managed to salvage my sister’s purse from the charred wreckage told us. He seemed completely unphased by the whole thing - car fires like this invariably burn quickly and severely, and are apparently more often than not caused by a sloppy service and a dodgy bit of wiring. In case you’re interested, it was a 2004 Fiesta with tiptronic transmission.

I wish I could say that I was prepared for this scary turn of events. But that would be a lie. I had absolutely no idea what the right thing to do is when your car looks like it’s going to catch fire. As it turns out, our instinct to pull over as quickly as possible and get as far away from the vehicle as possible, as swiftly as possible was the right one. Cambridge Fire Service’s website has a page detailing sensible precautions to take to reduce the risk of a car fire. I’m surprised to read that an overheated engine (due to lack of water, for example) is much less likely to be a cause of a car fire than an electrical defect.

I also had no idea what happened next when you find yourself stranded on the hard shoulder with a burning car and traffic shooting by at 80mph. After we called 999, but before the fire brigade arrived to put the fire out, we were joined by an off-duty policce officer who stopped on his bike and proceeded to get us very far away from the car and to stand in the middle of the carriageway himself, directing traffic safely past the blaze. This man had some serious guts.

Two fire engines arrived within minutes of our call and were able to extinguish the blaze swiftly (without the fuel tank exploding - phew). They took lots of details from the three of us (who were so hysterical we didn’t even notice the lovely off-duty police officer leave or get his name to send him a thank you card, alas) about the incident, who we had hired the car from and so on. A Highways Agency 4×4 arrived shortly after this, followed by a tow truck.

I had assumed that the Highways Agency staff would take us and our burnt tent, sleeping bags, and so on, to civilisation (or at least to Windsor). But apparently it’s against the rules. So instead, we and the burnt car were taken by the tow truck guys to a roadworks vehicle recovery yard off a random slip road near Junction 6 of the M4. Here we clutched cups of hot tea and watched the whole incident on playback from the CCTV tapes the road works guys were managing. It was gloriously sunny, so we sat in the yard, picked our way through our sooty and melted bags of festival essentials, sipped gin and tonics (yes, it was still only 7.30am by this point - so sue me!) and laughed hysterically at the whole crazy sequence of events.

Eight hours after setting off for the festival I was sitting back at my kitchen table, thanks to a lift home from my ever-amazing husband who drove all the way from Brighton to pick the three of us up from the motorway sidings, and feeling dazed but perfectly unscathed. My sisters, being braver souls than I, headed off to the festival again the following morning. I decided to sit it out this year. But in case you were wondering, don’t worry, the funnel survived.

Next year.