"The limo caught fire trapping people inside, according to witnesses.
Five women in their 30s died Saturday night when a stretch limousine burst into flames on the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge, police confirmed to NBC News.
Four other people in the limo escaped with burn and smoke inhalation injuries, California Highway Patrol Officer Art Montiel said. The car’s driver was unhurt.
…
Witnesses told NBC Bay area the white Lincoln Town Car was not involved in an accident prior to catching on fire. It was not clear what could have sparked the flames."
Any thoughts on what could have caused the tragedy? Usually auto fires result from a collision or start in the engine area.
Overheated rear end? The drive train, not the women. I suppose if a u-joint was going out or the rear end hadn’t been properly lubed, it could overheat with the load of ten people in the car and maybe set material in the trunk on fire.
I’m guessing a cigarette started a fire in the back and the driver didn’t notice. By the time he realized what was going on it was too late for some of them. I’d put money down that alcohol was a significant factor as well.
Cigarettes don’t stay lit for very long and I doubt people smoke in Limos. It would like smoking in a closet.
If it was an electrical fire it could have been the electrical windows in the back doors. Those are thermally fused to shut off if people are playing with them but that could have failed.
Fuel line rupture would be my guess. Passengers should have been able to exit by crawling through the drop-down window between driver and passenger.
…because he was 35 feet from the fire and had his own door.
Seriously, I don’t know how cramming ten (ETA: drunken, group-stupid) people into a flammable space with one limited-access door can be legal. As much as I like some looseness for custom-constructed vehicles, ones intended to carry passengers should be held to higher standards than how many bottles of cheap champagne the cooler can hold or how many video screens have been jammed in.
Overheated rear diff or fuel line problem, almost certainly traceable to the gross overloading of the basic vehicle engineering. Bet on it.
Or, as my kids have learned to say in acid tones when we pass one of these ridiculous, underengineered glam-wagons, “Oh, look, someone famous.”
People smoke in cars, and I don’t see how a limo is significantly different.
Any mechanical issue severe enough to cause a fire is likely to have stopped the limo. It doesn’t seem like that is the case. From what I’ve read the back was on fire when the driver pulled over.
A broken fuel line would have been spraying gas under the car - modern cars have two fuel lines, one feed and one a fairly high pressure return line. A rupture on the latter would have no effect on vehicle operation and with a spark or a hot exhaust, would turn into a flamethrower.
An overheated U-joint or differential would run for quite some time before making itself significantly known to the driver, especially on such a heavy and ungainly vehicle. (That is, a draggy driveline would cause more issues sooner on a lighter vehicle.)
If you look at the picture the flames are coming out of the back of the limo, not anything in the undercarriage. I just don’t see anything mechanical or even a ruptured fuel line causing that. The fire looks internal to the limo to me.
Though I don’t know if/how they reroute fuel lines when making limos, the fire being strictly internal does not preclude a ruptured fuel line, since they usually run through the interior.
In fact, with the modified chassis of a limo being under higher stresses, it’s not hard to imagine something breaking loose/buckling and pinching open a fuel line.
I’m willing to lay good odds it isn’t the result of a mechanical defect in the limo. Either somebody dropped a WP grenade, or they set the fire accidentally themselves.
That’s an *awful *lot of fire that must have grown to that size *awful *fast for there not to have been some sort of accelerant. (IOW, gas) I highly doubt the interior alone could have caught fire that big/fast.
The doors aren’t electric. They are the same mechanical doors the car came with.
To build a stretch limo they take a standard car and put it in a giant band saw and cut it in half at the B pillar ( the pillar between the front and rear doors) then they weld in a plug which is nothing more than a tube whose outer profile is the same as the cut ends. Weld in the divider to the front half, weld the plug to the front half, add the interior the weld the back half on.
Then all you have to do is extend the various lines, cables, and drive shaft and you have a very long vehicle that only has 4 doors.
I’ve never understood the appeal of a limousine. I’ve been in one exactly once, and that was enough for me. I’d rather be in a bus, at least you can see outside.
I don’t think anybody uses ether to free-base their cocaine anymore, now that it’s commonly distributed in a ready-to-smoke free-base form. (That’s crack, jack.)