I wrote this as an email to some family members and people I work with early this morning

So yes, I’m up at 2 AM. The fire department left our house about 45 minutes ago, and we’re just letting everything settle in.

Monica’s car caught on fire around 12:30 this morning.

It was parked in front of the garage, and miraculously, the house was not damaged. In fact, our garbage can was sitting less than 5 feet from the car, and it was only a little melted on one side. You can see in the pictures just how close it was to the house.

It was a total fluke…Monica wasn’t feeling well, and was in bed at 7. I felt her get out of bed just after midnight, then felt her return a short while later. I heard her say something about “what’s that noise?” and felt her get out of bed again, then seconds later, heard her yelling for me. I got up, and all I could see was orange outside of our dining room window. “My car in on fire!” she said. I remember looking out the window, then running to the front door. I felt it, it wasn’t hot, so I opened it. The heat was intense. No way was I getting out the front. But it looked like nothing else was burning.

My car was sitting nearby, so I grabbed my keys and ran around the side of the house to move it out of the way while Monica called 911. I came back in and told her to get Rachel and get out of the house. I was worried with as high as the flames were, that it would catch the front of the house on fire.

While she got Rachel out, I grabbed the garden hose and started spraying the front of the house while trying to hide behind the corner in case anything exploded.

Luckily, we live less than a mile from the fire station, and they were at our house within minutes of Monica calling.

Her car had been sitting in the driveway for over 6 hours, but the fire department said that it looked mechanical…they did not suspect arson. We’re still a little bit in shock, and just grateful at all of the random events (Monica waking up, hearing the noise) that allowed us to call the fire department quickly, have no damage to our house, and have everyone in our family safe this morning.