We were awoken in the middle of the night by a blaring car alarm, only to walk out and see our car on fire. The fire department arrived within a few minutes and put it out without further incident. Thankfully, nobody was hurt, and no other property was damaged.
It looked like some sort of flammable fluid was leaking through the engine compartment and into the tire well…
It’s an older car, so at first we just thought it was some electrical fault, or maybe a battery jumpstarter that caught on fire.
But then we came inside checked the driveway camera footage:
Looks to me like someone lighting something on fire, walking across the street, and then exiting screen left towards where our car would be. After a minute or so, you can start seeing the fire flickering against the tree.
It’s a sad world where people feel justified in doing something like that, whether targeted or just for the lulz. I hope you didn’t lose anything irreplaceable in the fire.
Yep, the police came by last night, and the fire dept’s arson investigator also stopped by. They have all the videos and photos, and also additional footage from a neighbor’s Ring cam. Apparently, it looked like somebody with a road flare.
We don’t believe it was targeted. We don’t have enemies that we know of, and are on good terms with our neighbors. The stickers we have are of mountain ranges and “go hiking” type things… so unless someone really hates the outdoors, we don’t think it was directed at us in particular. It looked like they were casually sauntering down the street after having lit the flare and tossed it on this particular car for some unknown reason. If someone hates us, well, they never let us know beforehand
The PD apparently got some better footage than we were able to, but we’ll continue asking the neighbors over the next few days.
Thankfully, nothing irreplaceable was in the car. We’re feeling fine, just hoping that this wasn’t the start of a serial arson spree… our generally safe town had two other vehicular arson incidents very recently, but those particular suspects are supposedly already in custody: Three Fires in Three Days | The Source Weekly - Bend, Oregon (not sure if these are at all related, or just coincidental)
We’ll see what happens, I suppose. Waiting to hear back from insurance about next steps, too.
That’s good news, it’s somehow more comforting to think it was just someone who was high as a kite with a road flare rather than someone with an axe to grind.
So sorry to hear about this. If you have comprehensive coverage on the vehicle you should get decent compensation, but it’s still heartbreaking.
I happened to watch one of those police bodycam videos recently that involved exactly this sort of incident. It turned out to be some random asshole and, based on surveillance video, yes he was caught.
Our neighborhood, and the adjoining neighborhood, were both hit by random arson just a couple years ago. No major damage, but a lot of newly-installed Ring doorbells and a whole lot of collective anxiety.
It became national news.
Two of the target houses/cars were within line-of-sight of my house.
They eventually charged a local (a mobile home park, just a short walk away) 16-year old kid for all the events. No idea what happened, or if there was ever a motive determined.
It seems from the time the perp lit the flare until they got to your car they walked past several other cars also parked in the street. Burning road flares aren’t hard to hold on to, but they’re also not real pleasant to hold onto. They’re certainly attention attracting. A thinking vandal would have picked a target car, stood adjacent, then lit their flare and immediately stuck it in/on that car and walked / run away. This idjit did it all backwards.
Unrelated thought …
This event shows pretty clearly that in general, the kinds of security cams that so many people now have are great for documenting what happened, but not so useful for identifying who did it.
Also best of luck to the police for catching the perp.
If it started in the engine compartment it is highly unlikely that it was arson. Someone who wants to light your car on fire is not going to the trouble of open your door, then quietly opening the hood, and starting a fire on top of the engine, and closing the hood again.
Small unnoticed leak, smoldering for awhile, rats chewing on wires, there are a number of ways that fires start that are not intentional and can be very mysterious. You had an unexplained event, but I really doubt someone set your car on fire.
Ring cameras are great. Unfortunately they are a lot less effective at night. It’s hard to get a clear enough view of someone’s face, license plate or even make and model of their car.
