Achi news desk-
Early in the morning on May 14, Vicki Hill was startled awake by the sound of explosions outside her home in Bethesda, Md. The loud bangs, he later learned, had come from the airbags of the family’s SUV, a 2015 Nissan Murano parked in the driveway. It was on fire.
“I thought someone was trying to get into our house with a sledgehammer and I woke up my husband and said something is wrong,” she told CNN. “And he ran down the stairs and yelled up, ‘Call 911, the car’s on fire!'”
Video from the home’s doorbell camera, provided by the family to CNN, shows smoke before the fire erupted and then engulfed the car.
The cause of the fire in the Murano remains unknown. Nissan is investigating the fire. The National Highway Traffic Administration is also gathering information about the fire.
“The safety and security of our customers is our primary concern,” a Nissan spokesperson said in response to an email asking about the fire. “We have opened an investigation into this incident.”
Murano The Hills was recalled by Nissan in 2016 and 2019, to fix a problem that could allow brake fluid to leak and start a fire, even while the vehicle is parked. At the time, owners were warned to park their vehicles outside and away from buildings until the issue was repaired due to fire risks.
A search on the NHTSA website showed that there is an unrepaired recall of the Hills Murano. The couple said a local fire investigator suggested the unrepaired recall may have caused the fire. But the Hills remember doing the work and provided CNN with a photo of the receipt from a local Nissan dealer that showed the repair was done. CNN has not confirmed whether the receipt is authentic.
The Hills said that because the retrieval was done, the possibility of a fire was not something that crossed their minds.
Philip Hill had been fixing up the garage, so the couple’s two cars were parked in the driveway. Otherwise, the Murano would have been parked inside the garage next to the house.
“As you can see from the video, that vehicle is so close to the house,” Philip Hill told CNN. “Minutes later, the house could have gone up.”
As it was, the garage door was melting from the flames, they said. The Hills credit a neighbor’s dog with saving them and their three children. The neighbor was able to call 911 before The Hills, after being alerted by her dog.
The intense flames from the burning Nissan also damaged the side of the family’s other car, a 2012 Mercedes C-class, leaving it unusable.
Initially, the Hills were concerned that they might have been the victim of vandalism. But they said the video footage from their Nest doorbell camera clearly showed the vehicle spontaneously combusting.
Nissan took possession of the Murano on Wednesday for closer study, the Hills said.
As surprising as the situation in the Hills may seem, vehicle fires are not uncommon. In 2022, an estimated 188,500 car and truck fires broke out in the United States, an average of more than 500 per day, according to the National Fire Protection Association. Vehicle fires caused 610 civilian deaths that year, according to the NFPA.
