Their Nissan SUV was parked in the driveway. Then it caught fire and exploded

CNN
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Early on the morning of May 14, Vicki Hill was awakened by the sound of explosions outside her home in Bethesda, Maryland. The loud bangs, she later learned, came from the airbags in the family’s SUV, a 2015 Nissan Murano parked in the driveway. It was on fire.

“I thought someone was trying to break into our house with a hammer and I woke my husband up and told him something was wrong,” she told CNN. “And he ran downstairs and screamed, ‘Call 911, the car’s on fire!'”

Video from the home’s doorbell camera, which the family provided to CNN, shows smoke before the fire broke out and then engulfed the car.

The cause of the Murano fire remains unknown. The fire remains under investigation by Nissan. 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 a statement responding to an email requesting information about the fire. “We have opened an investigation into this incident.”

The Hills Murano was recalled by Nissan in 2016 and 2019 to address an issue that could allow brake fluid to leak and start a fire, even when the vehicle is parked. At the time, homeowners were warned to park their vehicles outside and away from buildings until the problem was resolved due to fire risks.

A search of the NHTSA website indicated that there was an unrepaired recall in progress on the Hills Murano. The couple said a local fire investigator suggested the unrepaired booster could have caused the fire. But the Hills remember doing the work and provided CNN with a photo of the receipt from a local Nissan dealership showing the repair was done. CNN has not confirmed whether the receipt is authentic.

The Hills said that because the recall work had been done, the possibility of a fire had not crossed their minds.

Philip Hill was repairing the garage, so the couple’s two cars were parked in the driveway. Otherwise, the Murano would have been parked inside the garage attached to the house.

“As you can see in the video, this vehicle is so close to the house,” Philip Hill told CNN. “A few minutes later the house could have been destroyed.”

In fact, the garage door melted 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, rendering it unusable.

Initially, the Hills feared they had been victims of vandalism. But they said video footage from their Nest doorbell camera clearly showed the vehicle spontaneously combusting.

Nissan took possession of the Murano Wednesday to study it more closely, Hills said.

As surprising as the Hills’ situation may seem, vehicle fires are not uncommon. In 2022, about 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 the deaths of 610 civilians that year, according to the NFPA.