Lucky escape as car burst into flames after steering failed:
24-YEAR-OLD ON MOMENT VEHICLE BURST INTO FLAMES AS STEERING AND BRAKES FAILED
A24-YEAR-OLD man has spoken of the “horror” he felt when his sports car caught fire near a busy Gwynedd roundabout.
Callum Williams, from Caernarfon, was in the vehicle with his mother Debbie, 43, when all of a sudden it began to fill up with thick smoke by the Parc Menai roundabout on the A487 near Bangor.
As the smoke billowed through the inside of the red Audi TT, Debbie, who was at the wheel, told her son the car had become completely unresponsive.
Even the steering wheel didn’t work, and as the car was approaching a busy roundabout she was left with no choice but to pull up the handbrake.
“That was when I was most scared,” Callum said.
“When my mum stopped the car, there was smoke everywhere and I could barely see the door handle to get out.
“My feet were becoming very hot and we both panicked as we tried to exit the car.”
Once he and his mother were out of the vehicle, Callum opened the bonnet to see what had happened.
He says that in hindsight he should have left the car alone, having seen how it would burst into flames a few minutes later.
“I opened the bonnet and the smoke just burst out. I could see a little flame as well, so I told my mum to run and I called 999.
“Wi t h i n less than five minutes, the whole car was on fire with flames about a foot high.”
The pair were driving towards Caernarfon and would have approached the downhill stretch towards Y Faenol had they carried on. Thinking about this, Callum says, makes him realise how lucky he and his mother were.
“People have been telling us ever since how lucky we were. I didn’t feel that lucky to start off with as my car had just been written off, but the more I think about it, the luckier I feel.
“Five minutes either side of where we eventually stopped and we would have likely been doing closer to 60mph, and who knows what would have happened if we would’ve pulled up the handbrake
at that speed.
“Especially with the downhill stretch towards Y Faenol only a few minutes away of where we were.”
The fire brigade, Callum says, took 20 minutes to arrive during which time the car was completely ablaze. There was not much left to salvage, with most of the vehicle reduced to ashes and barely recognisable after the incident.
Callum says he is “gutted” about the car, which he bought only recently, but is “too shocked” to think about that just yet.
“It was a horror experience,” he said. We’re both still in a state of shock, I’ve been shaking all day.
“I didn’t realise it at the time, but my mum and I could have lost our lives and we’re only here out of luck.
“I just want to put the experience behind me now and move on.”