A senior North Queensland firefighter has praised the actions of a passer-by and an alert petrol station employee after a motorist attempted to drive his burning car into Ingham Shell.
Mark Drysdale, the officer in charge of the Ingham Fire and Rescue Station, told the Townsville Bulletin that a husband and wife from Koah near Cairns were approaching the Bruce Highway and Cartwright Street intersection in their car just before midday.
“The guy started to see a bit of fire, so he decided he was going to pull into the Shell and have a look.”
Mr Drysdale said an alert Coles Express Ingham staff member rushed out with a DCP extinguisher.
“Bronwyn from Shell was really good, she looked after him and basically extinguished the fire,” he said.
Bronwyn, the manager, declined to be interviewed this afternoon, directing all queries to Coles head office.
Mr Drysdale said a local electrician arrived on the scene before QFES, “and basically coordinated everything before we got there.”
“It was a job well done by everybody,” he said.
“We just came along, cooled the whole engine block off and made the area safe.”
Mr Drysdale, a seasoned fire investigator, said the 2010 Nissan navara pulled onto the footpath and “partially on the service station.”
Asked about the danger posed by the burning car, he said petrol stations were equipped to deal with such situations.
He also said that a modern-day fuel bowser itself contained only about four litres of fuel at any given time.
“There is a double tank-sealing system so that technically, fire can’t get past that double system.”
Hitting the bowser itself was another matter entirely, he said.
The car suffered significant damage.
Extracted from Townsville Bulletin