Vehicle catches fire, burns along Highway 200 west of Lincoln

Lincoln Fire Rescue responded to a car fire on Highway 200, a couple hundred yards east of Lone Point Road, Saturday afternoon July 10.

No one was injured in the blaze, but a suspected fuel leak destroyed the Jeep Cherokee, which .

was fully engulfed in flames by the time Lincoln Fire Chief Zach Muse arrived, just three minutes after receiving the page.

Muse said the driver, who had only owned the vehicle for a couple days, was heading from Missoula to Great Falls with his daughter and dog to visit family at the time of the incident.

“He saw it catch and basically got his daughter and his dog out,” Muse said. The driver had time to pull off the road and pull most of their personal items out of the vehicle.

Muse said he got everyone who was watching away from the vehicle before the fuel tank ignited. Muse kept the fire in the grass away from the family’s personal belongings with an extinguisher until members of a Montana Department of Natural Resources fire crew, which had been with him when the call came in, arrived to deal with the slow burning grass.

“Then the big truck rolled up and knocked ‘er out,” Muse said, referring to the LVFD fire engine. Lincoln firefighters then worked to cool off any remaining hotspots in the vehicle.

Muse said it looked as though fuel had been leaking from the fuel fill pipe, possibly from work done before the vehicle was sold.

“I’m guessing it got on that tire and, coming through the canyon, his brakes were hot. He probably hit them to slow down for the corner and got them a little hotter, and it just caught on fire,” he said. Unlike the other tires, the rear tire on the driver’s side, near the gas cap, was completely burned and the wheel itself was almost entirely melted.

The call was the second of the weekend for Lincoln Fire Rescue. They responded to a motorcycle wreck on Flesher Pass Friday evening. The rider, who was headed to the Lincoln Bike Rally with a group, didn’t suffer serious injuries, although he had a probable concussion.