Car catches fire in Chesterfield family's driveway

CHESTERFIELD, VA (WWBT) - A Chesterfield family's car went up in flames and they caught the whole thing on video. But the car was sitting in their driveway and wasn't even running.

Now, they're wondering how this could happen.

It happened as the family of six was eating dinner inside their home on Rivers Bend Circle. "We suddenly heard two separate, sounded like, explosions," Reza Omarzai said.

The fire spread quickly. Omarzai says it took 45 minutes for crews to put the flames out. "It just seems very odd. It's almost like the car spontaneously combust," Omarzai said.

The owner says his two sons were sitting in back seat about an hour or so before the fire. He says he had just picked them up from daycare and had noticed the engine on his Mercedes was making a funny noise.

"There was like a humming noise," Omarzai said, "and I noticed the fan was not moving. But there was this noise I had never heard before."

"It's unusual, unfortunate bad luck," says Emmerson Miles of Miles Auto Services. "I don't see any recalls or bulletins or anything that would related to this."

Miles says the biggest thing that prevents fires like this is regular maintenance.  "Any time you hear something, smell something, feel something get it checked out don't put it off," he said.

Omarzai said he made plans to take the car to the mechanic the next day. But of course, he never made it. Now this father of four boys, the youngest a newborn, is glad the car wasn't parked in the garage. "If we had been asleep with the car parked in the garage, the house would have clearly been destroyed," he said.

He says he believes it was luck that was on his family's side.

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