Three Eastside Fire & Rescue engines extinguished flames from a single vehicle fire Wednesday on a rural Tiger Mountain road after the vehicle reportedly overheated and burst into flames.
No one was injured in the fire.
Firefighters arrived shortly after receiving the 12:15 p.m. call and extinguished the blaze within 20 minutes, but not before the flames rendered the vehicle, a Jeep Grand Cherokee, a total loss and damaged a nearby tree. The fire occurred about a mile up Southeast 127th Street, an unpaved road that residents of the state forest use to access their homes. The road also provides access to Fraternity Snoqualmie Nudist Resort.
Fraternity Snoqualmie resident and accident victim Bill Coup said he was heading back up mountain after picking up medication and gasoline for his vehicle in Issaquah when he noticed some car problems he’d been having were acting up again.
“It started making that noise again,” he said. “It must have been a broken heater hose. There was a lot of steam and then I lost (engine) pressure, power and my breaks and started rolling back down the hill.”
Coup luckily escaped the slowly careening vehicle by steering it into a ditch that ran between the road and the upper slopes of the mountainside, bailing out via the passenger side door. Once clear of the Jeep, he noticed a small fire had erupted near the undercarriage. A neighbor quickly arrived with a fire extinguisher but the contents were exhausted before the flames were put out. Once the flames emerged near an interior gas can he had just refilled, Coup took cover.
“The can and then the tires just exploded,” he said.
