SEQUIM — A resident of Jennie’s Meadow is safe — in part thanks to an attentive neighbor — after her car caught fire.
According to Sequim Police, a Lincoln car became fully engulfed in flames early Nov. 27 on the 100 block of Goldenrod Lane in the Sequim housing development Jennie’s Meadow.
Firefighters with Clallam County Fire District 3 responded to the scene at about 6:40 a.m. and extinguished the car; its driver was OK medically and not transported for medical aid, police reported.
Neighbor Steven Johnson was the first to spot the car fire.
Johnson, an employee for Mervin Manufacturing, said he works nights and he heard a “bang” around 6:30 a.m. His bedroom sits over his home’s garage and he can see into the street, he said.
“I see this car with fire underneath it,” Johnson said. “It was bizarre. I didn’t see anyone getting out, so I called 9-1-1.
“I grabbed my phone and saw this elderly person struggling to get out of her car. I asked if she was OK. She said yes.”
Johnson said the woman was in her 90s and leaning on the car while it was on fire. She was having difficulty with mobility, he said.
“She was not moving away from the car, just standing and leaning on it,” Johnson said.
“It was clearly on fire.”
He told her they needed to get away from the car because it was burning, so he took her to his front door and got her a blanket.
“She was saying, ‘Help me, anybody help me,’ and I happened to see it from my window,” he said.
When he first saw the car fire, Johnson said it looked like when people put lights underneath their vehicles for effect.
“Then it got bigger and bigger,” he said. “Then there was the popping sound from the tires popping.
“You can see on the asphalt where the tires were burning.”
While with the woman waiting for the fire department, Johnson said he noticed her in socks, so he asked why she was out so early. The woman told him she wanted to check her car battery because she hadn’t driven in a while and wanted to drive before anyone else.
Neighbor Susan Conley-Mueller said she saw flashing lights outside her front window at about 6:30 a.m. Nov. 27 and thought it might be lights from an ambulance responding to a medical issue. Instead, she saw the car fire.
“I thought maybe [the car] would explode,” she said.
Johnson said the driver made her own way out of the car and he simply assisted her.
Neither he nor Conley-Mueller had met the woman before, but knew she lived nearby, they said.
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Michael Dashiell is the editor of, and Matthew Nash a reporter with, the Sequim Gazette of the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which also is composed of other Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News and Forks Forum. Reach Dashiell at editor@sequimgazette.com.. Reach Nash at mnash@sequimgazette.com.
