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People are shocked at a cellphone video showing a car that’s on fire suddenly explode into a fireball as the fuel tank ruptures. It’s a nice reminder to those of us who know how vehicles work and understand how combustible gasoline is that a lot of other people are clueless.
Ferrari 458 Spider burns to the ground in Japan.
The car fire, which happened at a parking lot in Arlington, Virginia, started on a vehicle which was unoccupied and just sitting in a stall when it suddenly caught on fire. The cause of the fire isn’t clear, but it honestly could have been a number of things.
Electrical faults can start car fires, as can leaks from a number of systems, including the hydraulic power steering. As weird as it sounds, leaving a clear water bottle in your interior can act as a magnifying glass, sparking a blaze.
Whatever started the fire, the heat eventually compromised the fuel tank. We don’t know if that’s because the tank is made of plastic or the flames were able to melt through the layers of metal. Most likely it’s the former scenario than the latter.
Some gearheads will try to argue that the old steel gas tanks are automatically superior since they don’t typically melt and cause a vehicle to become a raging inferno like this. Instead, they corrode from the inside out, causing other issues.
This is why if you’re by a car that’s on fire, you should stay a good distance away or you could become part of the barbecue. In this case, the vehicles parked by this one also caught fire as the flames exploded outward violently, destroying those rides as well.
Thankfully, in this case nobody was injured.
Image via ABC7/Facebook
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