NORTHAMPTON — Northampton Housing Authority Executive Director Cara Clifford worked late Tuesday night, a decision that appears to have been fortuitous for a young woman driver on Interstate 91 south.
As she headed home with her fiance around 8 p.m., Clifford said the couple passed a Jeep in the breakdown lane near Exit 15 in Holyoke and noticed a flame under the vehicle with someone inside. The couple stopped south of the vehicle to alert the driver to the flames.
“I went running down to her,” Clifford recalled. “I just know somebody was in there on their phone.”
Clifford said she tried to alert the young woman as she ran closer and closer to the vehicle in high-heeled shoes until she was about 10 or 15 feet away. She finally got the driver’s attention, she said, and the young woman got out of the vehicle and fled to safety with Clifford.
The Gazette was not able to contact the driver of the vehicle Wednesday.
Clifford said the Jeep soon exploded into flames, which fully engulfed the vehicle as the Holyoke Fire Department and State Police arrived. The fire sent fragments of the Jeep into adjacent lanes, she said.
“The first explosion happened when we were about 500 feet away,” Clifford said. “It was so crazy. I watched the windshield melt. It burned right down to the frame.”
State Police confirmed Wednesday morning that they had shut down the right two lanes as a 2003 Jeep Liberty was fully engulfed in flames about 8:45 p.m. Tuesday at Exit 15. All lanes were reopened nearly an hour later, according to State Police.
A police report had not been completed early Wednesday afternoon and details from the Holyoke Fire Department were not immediately available.
Asked whether she was frightened approaching the Jeep before the fire took over, Clifford said she was in “crisis mode” and acting on adrenaline.
“She could have died in that fire,” Clifford said. “God put me in a place to help somebody.”
Clifford said she learned the young woman was a student at Holyoke Community College, who was concerned about her backpack and school work in the Jeep.
Clifford said she talked with the driver’s father on a cell phone at the highway, explaining what happened. The woman’s parents eventually showed up to take their daughter home, she said.
Dan Crowley can be reached at dcrowley@gazettenet.com.