Squirrel suspected of causing blaze
Four explosions as vehicle, with four new tires and a full tank of gas, burned
It seemed the whole neighbourhood was alerted to the death of a Ford F-150.
The alarm horn on the vehicle blared away as firefighters tackled the blaze on the Lakeside Drive, Yarmouth County, property on March 16 as explosions rocked the vehicle.
And it may have been a squirrel that led to the demise of the pickup truck.
Arnold Ellis owned the truck for 13 years and drove it only occasionally. He said he’s pretty sure squirrel damage in his engine can be blamed for the fire, as he experienced something similar three or four years ago.
One spring the fan wouldn’t turn in the truck’s engine. He took it to a garage and mechanics told him he had a rat nest inside the engine.
“They dug it all out and had to remove other parts of the engine to get at it. It was on that side where the fire was. Two years later the same thing happened again. It wasn’t rats, it was squirrels, because one day when I backed out in the spring there was a squirrel chasing me in the driveway,” he says.
Ellis says the truck — a Ford F-150 — had four brand new tires on it and a full tank of gas and that he had driven it a few days before.
Just before it caught fire, he had decided to drive it to where he had a tree blocked up at the back of his property. He planned on bringing the wood up closer to his shed. He put half-a-dozen blocks on the back of the truck and came around to the side and saw smoke coming out the door.
He climbed in for a closer look and could see a plug hanging down with five or six wires on it. Flames were flickering on the end of the wires.
“I thought it was a rag that had caught fire somehow,” he says. “I got out of the truck and ran around to the other side.
I had an old jacket there and I grabbed that and put it on top but every time I took it away, the flame would come back as big as ever.”
Ellis ran into the house to get the fire extinguisher but, when he pulled his head out from beneath the dash, he saw the whole top aflame. The fire was spreading fast. He then ran to the house and called 911.
“I’d only driven that truck 10 or 15 seconds to back it down to where it was level,” he says.
The flames grew in height and intensity and there were four explosions. Ellis thinks one must have been from the full
The dashboard after the blaze. tank of gas and another must have been the airbags.
All of his keys, including his remote car key, were lost in the fire. He says the site looked like a volcano the next morning. He believes his lost keys may have been under the melted blob.
The 20-year-old vehicle was not insured for fire and theft, just public liability because of its age.
Ellis’s wife, Bernise, says she feared for the safety of the firefighters.
“You have to admire the firemen. They weren’t really close but close enough and I was so scared for them that something was going to blow up,” she says.
Arnold watched from the patio.
“They kept pouring water onto it and flames were still coming out of the hood,” he says. “One fireman took a crowbar and he pried the hood up on the engine.”
The truck had a cap on it but that was unrecognizable after the fire. It had melted down inside the back of the truck.
The first pumper truck ran out of water and another one arrived to finish off the job.
“The fire was so close to the woods, I was afraid it was going to catch the woods on fire. I tell you that smoke was billowing,” says Arnold.
“There were cars on either side of the road, watching,” says Bernise.
During the blaze, both of them were relieved when the fire finally silenced the truck’s horn.