Damaged cellphone sets ute alight
A family making their way to Saturday sports got the fright of their life when a cellphone set their ute on fire.
Paeroa mum Janine Parrish thought nothing of it when she threw her broken cellphone into the back of her ute in a rush to her kids’ Saturday sports game on July 1. The phone was damaged after she had earlier left it on the covered deck of her Toyota Hilux.
When she came back to look for it, she found the Samsung phone had been run over and broken into several pieces, with the battery separate from the rest of the broken phone.
So she put what was left of the phone in the back of her ute, along with the sports gear, and the family of four made their way to the children’s sports game in Tairua.
About 10 minutes along the Kopuhikuai Rd, she looked in the rear vision mirror and saw smoke coming from the back of their vehicle.
‘‘I couldn’t really believe my eyes,’’ she said. ‘‘I didn’t know what it was really. [Husband] Barry said ‘we’re on fire, stop’.’’
The fire service have confirmed the phone was the cause of the fire.
They got their children Amelia, 10, and Charlie, 6, out of the ute and on to a nearby bank, safely away from the burning vehicle, then Janine called 111 on Barry’s cellphone. Barry said he went to open the back of the ute, thinking something might have been just smouldering.
’’I couldn’t even open it, the flames jumped out at me.’’
Janine said she and the kids sat up on the bank and watched the car burn.
‘‘Luckily some people that stopped to help had a fire extinguisher and put it out,’’ she said.
’’If we’d waited for the fire brigade, the whole car just would have been gone. It was well alight. We were just thankful that we were all okay.’’
The Thames Volunteer Fire Brigade arrived about 15 minutes later and finished the job.
The ute and contents were covered by insurance and the back of the ute is being repaired. The front of the vehicle was okay.
The ute was towed and a police officer gave them a lift to Tairua. The children just made it to their football match – which they won, each scoring a goal, and they got a ride home to Paeroa.
The couple were surprised that a cellphone could do so much damage and were relieved they hadn’t put the damaged cellphone in a rubbish bin in the house, as it could have caused a fire in their home while they were away.
‘‘Everyone that we’ve spoken to have said you wouldn’t have thought that would happen,’’ Janine said.