Fire consumes area resident's car

Clouds of smoke billowed from the engine compartment of a 1986 Chevy Cavalier Thursday afternoon at the intersection of Highway 37 south and Wayport Road. Dave Henderson of Bloomington was returning from getting his license reinstated when his engine began making funny noises. He pulled off the highway into the strip of asphalt that connects the north and southbound lanes at the intersection and heard a loud pop. Oil poured from beneath the engine, and the engine caught fire. He pushed the burning car out of the road onto the grass median and watched as his newly regained wheels went up in flames. \nJoel Bomgardner, assistant chief of the Bloomington Township Fire Department, said the fire started in the engine compartment from an unknown cause. While most engine fires do not reach a car's gas tanks, Bomgardner said the fire still had to be treated as if it were dangerous. \n"If I would have made it up there, it would of been (dangerous)," Henderson said, pointing across the northbound lanes of the highway to the Amoco gas station. \nThe hood and front fenders of the car burned, turning the white paint to a scorched and peeling gray. The battery was reduced to a charred mess, and the right front tire burned off the rim. Inside the car the dashboard and front seats were blackened by the flames and pools of dirty water from the firefighters' hose gathered on the floorboards.\nA 911 call alerted the firefighters at 3:38 p.m. It took the department seven minutes to reach the fire and an additional minute to extinguish it, Bomgardner said. Overhaul, or a complete cooling of the fire using water, took another ten minutes and used around 75 gallons of water. \nThe U.S. Fire Administration Web site states that about a quarter of all fires in the United States in 1998 were vehicle fires. This is true for Indiana, according to the State Fire Marshal's Web site.