| Report Detail: |
Gas station owner rushed to pull burning nozzle from Ferrari
A man caught in the middle of a huge explosion while he was gassing up
his expensive sports car escaped the flames without a scratch. The incident
was caught on tape by a surveillance video, reports KIRO-TV in Seattle.
The reporter says it happened in Bellevue, Wash., where the driver had
just started squeezing the gas hose's handle to fuel his Ferrari, when
the area was completely enveloped in fire. "I'm 34 years old. I had
no idea I was that quick," remarked the driver, whose reflexes were
just fast enough to save his own skin, even though he appeared to be blasted
right out of view. But the driver says he could feel it coming, almost
as if it was in slow motion: "All of a sudden, I could feel the heat.
I could see it. I could see the flames coming up, and I lost all my breath.
It just disappeared from me." The driver reacted, leaping backward,
right out of the flash of exploding fumes. "And then," he continued,
"you see it surround me. You see it completely surround me."
At first, the driver thought he was burning, along with his car: "I
was checking myself out, thinking, 'I gotta be on fire.' But I wasn't."
The rare 1977 308 Ferrari was totaled, but the fire would've been worse,
had the store's owner not leaped in with a fire extinguisher and pulled
the burning gasoline nozzle out.
"He's a pretty tough old guy, I think, 'cause he stepped right in
there," The reporter says. It took seconds to ruin the classic collector's
car, but the driver's amazed he's alive to tell the story. "I can
replace the car. It's no big deal. I mean, it is a big deal. It's gonna
hurt a little bit, but I'm fine. That's the big deal for me."
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