Brainerd Woman Escapes Vehicle as Car Catches Fire in Drive-Thru Lane

It was a scary situation for a woman in Brainerd who escaped unharmed today after her vehicle caught on fire while in a coffee shop’s drive-through lane.

Firefighters responded to the scene on 2nd Ave. and Washington St. around 7:15 this evening, where a woman who was in the Starbucks drive-thru noticed her car was smoking.

“We had two people in our drive-thru, and she told the person in front of her to move out of the way because her car started smoking, so she raced through our drive-thru and went into the Jimmy John’s parking lot, got right out of her car, took her dog out with her, and ran away from her car,” said Starbucks barista Ella Mattheisen. “It started smoking even more, gas started coming out from the bottom and started sparking and then one of the sparks caught flame to the gasoline, and it kinda just poofed up into a big flame.”

The woman whose car caught on fire told our reporter at the scene that while she didn’t wish to speak on camera, she said that she was okay but in shock.