An electric vehicle crashed into a nail salon at a Mission Viejo strip mall just before noon Wednesday and immediately burst into flames, sending an off-duty fire captain sprinting into the burning building to check that everyone had made it out safely.
The crash happened on the 24000 block of Alicia Parkway, according to KTLA, with other reporting pinpointing the strip mall near Alicia Parkway and Via Linda, as reported by NBC Los Angeles. The vehicle caught fire immediately after plowing into the salon, and Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Chris Chang, who happened to be off duty and nearby, ran into the burning structure to make sure everyone had evacuated, according to a video the agency posted to Facebook. Chang works as a fire captain with OCFA, per the agency's own staff listing from the Orange County Fire Authority.
Engine 12 Was Already Rolling Nearby
As it turned out, help was closer than usual. The captain and engineer assigned to Engine 12 were in the area following an ambulance that was transporting a patient to the hospital on an unrelated call when they heard the fire dispatch come over the radio and diverted straight to the nail salon, per the OCFA video. Engine 12's crew arrived first on scene, secured a water supply, and worked alongside Chang to deploy multiple hoselines on the flames.
Video posted by the department shows flames and thick black smoke rising off the crashed vehicle before Engine 12 pulls up and firefighters begin spraying water on the fire. The footage, which runs just over a minute, ends on a view of the charred vehicle sitting in front of a scorched and damaged storefront. The department's video credits the quick response with knocking down the fire before it could spread to the rest of the building, the Facebook post shows.
Conflicting Injury Reports, Investigation Ongoing
Firefighters stretched hoses toward the burning car and sprayed it down to extinguish the flames, the NBC Los Angeles report notes. Accounts differ on what happened to the driver: KTLA reported that the driver was transported to the hospital, while NBC Los Angeles reported that officials had not released whether anyone was injured. KTLA additionally reported that no other injuries were recorded in connection with the crash.
The cause of the crash remains under investigation, according to the NBC Los Angeles report. Fires involving electric vehicles have drawn broader scrutiny from federal regulators in recent years; the National Transportation Safety Board has said it investigated several postcrash and noncrash fires involving electric vehicles that it says illustrate risks to emergency responders posed by high-voltage lithium-ion batteries, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. No other details about Wednesday's crash, including what caused it or how fast the vehicle was traveling, have been released.
