Vehicle catches fire in popular student apartment complex

‘It started small, but by the time the fire department came, the flames were like twelve feet high’

A vehicle caught on fire in the parking lot of “Home Properties of Bryn Mawr,” a popular residential apartment complex for Villanova students on Wednesday morning.

Two students near the lot noticed the fire at approximately 7:00am on Wednesday and promptly placed a call to 911.

Villanova senior and Home Properties resident, Samantha Schafer teamed up with one other student in the lot to call police when she emerged from her apartment and noticed the vehicle already partially engulfed in flames and a heavy black smog lingering in the air. Schafer remembers hearing “a popping as if things inside the car were exploding.”

“It was so scary,” Samantha told The Tab. There is a gas chamber right near where the car was and if it went for much longer it could’ve been so much worse because the gas would have exploded then too.”

Schafer reports waiting about 15 minutes before police arrived, at which point the vehicle was heavily engulfed by flames.

Alex Pennington, a university senior who lives in a building facing the lot, heard the car alarm go off around 7:00am and called 911 from his apartment.

Alex told The Tab: “The entire parking lot was filled with smoke. I couldn’t even see out my window.”

Pennington noticed that the cars directly to the right and left were also catching on fire, and watched as the car on the left caught fire and the windows on the car to the right began to shatter.

Neighboring vehicles also caught fire

“It started small, but by the time the fire department came, the flames were like twelve feet high.”

According to Alex, windows shutters on adjacent apartment buildings were also melting, but no residents appeared to be home at the time.

The owner of the vehicle has not yet been identified, and the cause of the fire is not yet known. Home Properties of Bryn Mawr could not comment on the incident.

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