WESTFIELD – A city youth whose car exploded after it caught fire on East Mountain has credited a fellow motorist with getting him out of the car promptly enough to escape injury.
Jeffrey Edinger, 19, of 19 Kylie Lane, said that he was on his way to class at Holyoke Community College, Tuesday morning when he heard a loud bang somewhere in his engine compartment and his car lost power.
He said that he was coasting to a stop when the car in front stopped and the operator “came out of his car and started flailing his arms.”
Edinger said he ran over to the man and discovered him to be John Gaudrault, the father of a boy he had played hockey with “back when I was five.” He said that his older brother is still a good friend of Gaudrault’s son.
He said that Gaudrault pointed out the flames under the engine compartment of his car and said that he had seen the fire in his rearview mirror when he had been operating in front of Edinger.
After he called 911, Edinger said, he stood with Gaudrault watching as the fire grew and together they retreated when it intensified.
The car exploded about five minutes after he exited it, Edinger said, while he was standing about 100 yards away, where traffic on the roadway had come to a stop.
Westfield firefighters report that the fire apparently began on the driver’s side of the engine compartment and burned thought the firewall to entirely engulf the engine compartment.
Edinger said that his car was a total loss. “It’s burned to a crisp” he said. The trunk is the only thing not totally destroyed, he said. The rest of the 2001 Saturn, he said “is burned to the frame, all you see is metal.”
Edinger lost all his school books, his class notes for the year and his laptop computer. He said that he has had to rewrite six essay assignments that had been stored in his computer. Studying for his upcoming finals will be more challenging than usual, he said, since he will have no notes and has to scramble to find replacement textbooks. But, he said he was not injured at all in the accident, thanks to Gaudrault’s warning and his timely exit from the car he did not know was on fire.
