WILSON, Wyo. — At 10 p.m. on Friday, June 24, firefighters and highway patrol responded to a call about a car fire on the east side of Teton Pass.
Parked on the uphill side of the road across from the overflow lot near the top of the pass, the small sedan was fully engulfed in flames upon arrival, and the driver was gone. With support from two different fire stations, the Wilson and Moose-Wilson locations, the fire was “knocked down within three to four minutes,” according to Mike Moyer, a battalion chief with the Jackson Hole Fire/EMS Department. “That means the majority of the flames have been extinguished, but hot spots remain. We worked it for another 20 minutes to cool things off.”
Officials never made contact with the driver, who fled the scene before they arrived. It’s the first car fire Moyer has experienced where the driver left, which was unusual, but the driver fleeing happens occasionally for other vehicle incidents. The fire destroyed the car to the point that the make, model and VIN number were unrecognizable.
Moyer, who has been working in fire emergency services for 35 years, says that a fire on the pass is nothing unusual either. “It’s often older vehicles under the strain of driving up the pass, and underlying mechanical issues come to the surface,” he says.
Emergency responders have already handled several car fires this year, and as we head into the hotter and drier part of summer, Moyer says there’s more concern of fire spreading into grass, sage and trees, and a car fire turning into a wildland fire.
“At this point it’s still green enough that we didn’t see any significant encroachment into wildlands for this fire,” he says. But it’s not just older vehicles overheating on the pass that pose significant fire risks.
“In general, the underside of vehicles are hot this time of year, so parking in sage or tall grass [is enough to start a fire]. They can also start from a broken fuel line or overheated brakes,” Moyer says. “A vehicle provides a lot of fuel, and it burns hot and fast once it gets established.”
If a vehicle does start overheating, he recommends trying to pull off the road into an area where there aren’t fuels like tall grass and brush. Small fires can be put out with a fire extinguisher, but larger fires require professional mitigation.
