Ring road car fire stops traffic
THREE women had to leap from their burning car on the Geelong Ring Road yesterday.
Joy Tate, who is in her early 70s, was driving with her two passengers from Bellbrae to her home in Melbourne’s inner south when she noticed something was wrong.
They were in Lovely Banks about 3pm when her Subaru Forester started smoking.
“We all leapt out and it caught fire under the car,” Ms Tate said.
A passer-by tried to fight the blaze with a handheld extinguisher but it quickly spread out of control.
CFA crews managed to bring the fire under control within 15 minutes, but not before ring road traffic had ground to a halt.
Ms Tate said she felt “a bit shaky” about the incident.
“Everything is gutted, the whole car and everything in it,” she said. “All the steering wheel is melted, the bonnet was gone — everything is melted.”
Ms Tate and her friends were taken to the Corio police station, and then organised a taxi back to Melbourne.
One lane of the Geelong Ring Road was closed in the area of Bacchus Marsh Rd and Anakie Rd, Lovely Banks, but traffic was later flowing normally.