JERSEYVILLE - A black Pontiac four-door sedan caught on fire in the Jerseyville Walmart parking lot on Thursday, Jan. 5. Jerseyville Fire Chief Keith Norman said while his department was able to contain the fire and put it out relatively quickly, the vehicle suffered extensive damage to the front end.
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Norman said the incident was called in at 4:51 p.m., and he happened to be driving nearby, allowing him to be on the scene just 28 seconds after the call. Firetrucks arrived seven minutes later and firefighters spent 20 minutes putting out the vehicle fire.
“It was absolutely totaled,” Norman said. “We kept the fire out of the passenger compartment, but the engine compartment was 100 percent destroyed.”
While the exact cause of the fire wasn’t determined, Norman said he expects it was a malfunction in the engine compartment.
“I would make an assumption that it did start in the engine compartment of the vehicle, so it was obviously some kind of mechanical malfunction in the engine,” he said. “But so much of that burns away, we may not know whether it was electrical, fuel, or what it was.”
Norman complimented the driver for keeping the vehicle secluded, which stopped the fire from spreading to other cars.
“The driver, when he noticed there was a problem, he was driving it and was able to get it into a part of the parking lot away from other vehicles,” he said. “There was no damage to anybody else. He did a good job of getting it to safety and getting away from it.”
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