Holy Smoke...no...Flames!

As I was walking out the employee entrance from work tonight I could hear a young man cursing foully and loudly. I looked left and saw him pacing around in the middle of the exit roadway talking on his cellphone. Straight ahead of me was a car I didn't recognized in the reserved Doctor's and Practitioners area. I headed to the brand new rental car in case the guy was nuts or made because he couldn't get his opioids...you never know in the medical profession. My co-worker's car was already gone so the Corolla was by itself. I started it and began to back out, but a van came along and pulled in beside me. I recognized it as belonging to another coworker who parks on the other side of the building. She and her sister bailed out and began walking fast toward the employee entrance. I could see the young man now pacing in the parking lot of the building next door, still on his phone. I turned my head to check where my co-workers were because it was just past 5PM and people were coming out behind me. Everyone was bunched up by the door.

An odd smell had followed me into the car. As I turned my head back to see where the guy was I noticed the hood of the car was up and holy smoke! No, great balls of FIRE! Flames were up over the top of the open hood in the entire engine compartment. Now I understood why the guy was flipping out- his car was on fire! (There's also a tree right there where his car was that was in danger of catching on fire because it was windy!) And there I sat in the brand new 2017 Corolla rental car with less that 20 miles on it just a couple of spaces to the right of the burning car...great! In my possession less than 24-hours and already close to a disaster!

Needless to say, I moved the car quickly out of the danger of explosion zone. As I passed the burning car I glimpsed one of the practitioners coming quickly down the long hallway toward the exit because his vehicle was two spaces to the left of the vehicle fire!

Talk about an exiting end to the day!

Tonight when Kelly and I passed by the parking lot on our way to run some errands just over an hour and a quarter later the parking lot was empty. I saw my coworker and her sister at the grocery store and she said the fire was extinguished quickly and everything was under control pretty fast. Good news, except for the poor owner of the burning car!