I feel sorry for the person who lost their car in the story below. When I was growing up in Rhodesia, my father lost his pickup truck in a similar manner. He had a load of dry cotton on the back of his pickup. It was contained in a special frame my dad had made which was about a foot or two higher than the top of the pickup’s cabin. There were 2 black workers who were riding in the back. One of them dropped a cigarette on the load, and it started burning. The blacks just jumped off the back of the pickup truck (as my dad was going slowly along the farm road). They did not attempt to kill the small fire, and my dad did not know the load at the back was on fire because he could not see it. When he stopped at our house there was already an intense fire. My dad just managed to get the pickup far enough away from the buildings and got out of the truck when the petrol tank finally caught fire and the vehicle was completely burned out. It was all of course completely avoidable, if the blacks had just killed the small fire in the beginning or had called to my father.

Here is a bit of a sad story from Orlando East here in S.Africa. There are a lot of informal businesses abounding by the side of roads run by blacks and whites.

One of the more common ones is the road-side exhaust repair business. Essentially it consists of a ramp for the car, and a gas welder.

It appears in these photos that somehow, the welding led to the car actually catching fire. I don’t know why they’re bothering to push the car off the ramp since that won’t solve the problem.

Real bummer… the customer’s car is totally burned out!