By Alejandro Barlow, March 5, 2024
A vehicle caught fire on Palm Drive Monday Feb. 26 morning. Smoke was seen from the 10 freeway. Shortly after, a photo posted on reddit of the police and fire department responding to the scene.
A Mercedes Benz drove onto campus at 7:54 a.m. and spontaneously caught fire from an overheating engine. The vehicle exited on Kellog Drive and turned onto Palm Drive to get away from traffic. The vehicle was isolated in the incident, the driver who is unaffiliated with Cal Poly Pomona, exited the vehicle once free from traffic according to University Police Department’s Sergeant Stephanie Samuels who was first to arrive on scene.
“The first thing that I was thinking is that we need to shut down the road and I didn’t have a vehicle because I was doing a foot patrol,” Samuels said. “So, our officers arrived almost within the same amount of time as me. As I was walking up, they were arriving, and we were shutting down the road.”
The driver was in the right lane on Palm Drive across the street of Parking Structure 1 where the car was stopped near palm trees that also caught fire, UPD responded to the scene and shortly after the Pomona Fire department contained the fire. Traffic going into Parking Structure 1 from the east entrance was blocked and rerouted to the west entrance for an hour and a half due to the short road closure.
According to Samuels, the fire was put out within 20 minutes of when it started, and the car was put on a flatbed truck and removed from campus within an hour and a half of its arrival. The roads reopened around 8:30 a.m. and traffic was light as this occurred prior to the morning rush hour.
“The driver stated that the car overheated,” Samuels said. “She pulled over to the side of the road to get out of the roadway. And then what happened, happened.”
No injuries were reported in the incident and no additional damage to property occurred during the incident, with only ash and burn marks left on the pavement and some minor burns on the palm trees lining Palm Drive. CPP’s Kellog Drive is a common exit point for commuters passing through CPP to access surrounding homes, businesses or Mt. San Antonio College. For some drivers it is the closest exit off the freeway for an emergency.
“Always try to make sure that your car is in good working order and what this driver did was they saw that the vehicle was overheating and pulled over to this side of the road safely, which is what we would want any driver to,” said Samuels.
Feature image courtesy of bobby_576 on Reddit.