By Jim Holt & Bobby Block
Signal Staff Writers
A burning motor home seen fully engulfed in flames prompted a swift response by firefighters to a vacant lot in Castaic Wednesday afternoon.
Shortly before 2:30 p.m., witnesses spotted the motor home on fire on The Old Road near Parker Road. Firefighters got to the scene within six minutes and extinguished the fire.
“The call was for an RV fire on a vacant lot,” Fire Department spokesman Chris Thomas said.
“When they got there, it was fully involved,” he said, adding there was no exposure to any other structure.
The lot is actually used to store boats and RVs.
Thanks to the quick-thinking owner of the ill-fated RV, the burning vehicle was moved to an isolated spot away from vehicles stored there.
The owner of the motor home was working on his RV when a propane tank exploded.
“At 2 o’clock the fire started,” said lot owner Agustin Infante. “A woman ran up saying, ‘Help me, help me,’ and I looked outside and saw the fire.
“He (motor home owner) was checking the lines or something,” Infante said.
The owner of the motor home, who identified himself only as Kim, recently retired and hoped to use the motor home to “see the world.”
“I was working on the generator outside the motor home,” Kim said. “When I heard a pop and, I thought that was kind of odd, but then about 30 seconds later the window was orange.”
“There was a fire inside so I pulled it away from the other vehicles and it burned to the ground,” he said.
Kim drove the burning motor home about 30 feet to keep it away from anything else.
Asked what was going through his mind while he was driving the burning RV, Kim said: “I didn’t want to pay for all these other vehicles.”
“Also, what I was thinking was, ‘I’m glad it’s wet out,’ because it gets a little dry around here.”
The motor home was about 25 years old, but, as Kim said, he was hoping to keep it around a bit longer.
“I just retired and I was going to hook that up and see the world.”
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