Last night my husband came back inside from checking some things on our new camper.  He told me that our truck had caught on fire and burned the door.  I just looked at him in awe.  How could that happen? I was confused.  He explained that when he got home from work, it had been raining and when he opened the truck door some water ran down on the electrical panel on the door.  He thought to himself that he should pull the door apart and dry it out, but came in the house and got lost in the insanity of dinner and getting kids ready for bed.  So during this time our truck was smoldering and burning away and we didn’t even know it.  The water had shorted out the electric mirror control and completely burned it, as well as a good portion of the other electrical wiring and door. You could see where it has started to burn up towards the lock and down towards the fabric at the bottom of the door.  Why it stopped we will never know.  Everyone is amazed it didn’t burn the truck and camper to the ground.  We have been told that usually once the plastic is on fire things progress quickly.  So we must have had an angel looking out for us.  I was still baffled that this could actually happen; a little water on the door panel and your vehicle can go up in smoke.  My mind ran wild, what if we had been out camping and had been in the camper and the fire didn’t go out.  Would we all still be here?  This was something I had never really thought of before; vehicle fires normally were in crashes right?  I read on the National Fire Protection Association website, that more than 2/3 of highway vehicle fires are due to mechanical or electrical problems.  The website has valuable information for everyone to read on fire and vehicle safety.

I hope by sharing our experience with a vehicle fire I might save somebody one day from going through something similar.  If any of your electrical panels get wet you need to disconnect the battery and dry the area as best you can, or have somebody help you.  I wouldn’t have thought to disconnect the battery but the tow company owner told me that we should have. If it does short or if it already has shorted and burned there is no longer juice going to the wiring.  Also contacting your insurance company to find out about fire coverage is a good thing, our truck was fully covered but had it burnt the camper as well, we would have been out of luck.  We hadn’t put insurance on the camper yet.  It seems in an unlucky situation we had a lot of luck.