Car Fire in Little Silver a Slight Glitch in First Day Plans

While were developing a plan for the opening of the school year, they had a lot of factors to take into consideration. There's the at both schools and the potential for traffic snarls throughout town as a result.

Creating alternate plans in the event of a car fire along one of the main traffic thoroughfares through town might not have made the list of potential headaches.

But on Thursday, as families began to head onto the roads to drop kids off at and for the first day of school, a car fire at 7:55 a.m. on Willow Drive, between Amelia Circle and Lovett Avenue, backed up traffic for about 20 minutes until the vehicle was removed from the scene.

According to police, a small fire in the engine compartment of a 2001 Chrysler sedan travelling east along Willow Drive by Cathleen McGhee of Keansburg caused delays as traffic was diverted until about 8:20 a.m. A mechanical malfunction appeared to be the cause of the fire, said police.

A Little Silver Department of Public Works employee, who was in the area at the time, used a fire extinguisher to put out the fire. The driver and passengers of the vehicle were not injured.