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| The van next to us caught fire this morning as they were packing to leave early, sadly I think the couple lost two dogs. The aire was about half full so most vans had 15 to 20 feet between them, this is at Portiragnes Plage near Beziers, the motorhome is now completely burnt out. We heard them making some noise about 6.30 and calling for a dog which I thought must have wandered off, before they banged loudly on our van and I picked out the word "feu". Opened a blind and saw that their van was well ablaze; my wife moved the van, I emptied a fire extinguisher into the open cab door (where the owner was calling for a dog) but it did little more than knock it down for a few seconds. Everybody else also moved away and watched from a distance. When the coach built body was half destroyed the safety valve on one gas bottle started to blow off and 4 or 5 minutes later there was an explosion which shook everyone up but no "BLEVE" and no debris reached anyone. The second bottle blew off until empty but there wasn't much left by then except the chassis. Pompiers arrived 15 minutes later. There is a pretty sombre mood here, really feel for the couple. I'll post some photos tomorrow. In hindsight I don't think I heard a smoke alarm from their van. |
