Cars, etc.

[Churak]

Texas wildfire wipes out collector’s 175 classic cars
Eric Gay/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Car collector John Chapman surveys the losses at his home, Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011, in Bastrop, Texas. Chapman lost more than 175 cars to the wildfires.123ASSOCIATED PRESS

A vintage car collector personally felt the wrath of one of the most destructive wildfires in Texas history.

While John Chapman’s home in Bastrop, Texas, was only singed and had some smoke damage, the vintage-car collector lost about 175 vehicles he kept in a garage or under pole barns.

His losses included about a dozen Corvettes and a Shelby Cobra.

As ashes swirled and tree stumps still spit flames, the 70-year-old Chapman pointed out the melted remains of a 1966 Pontiac GTO, a ‘57 Chevrolet pickup and a 1947 Studebaker pickup, and said: “You can either laugh or you can cry. You might as well laugh.”

“The house is safe, my wife and I are alive and good, and I’m not going to worry about it,” he said.

On Wednesday, firefighting crews began to gain control of the wind-stoked blaze that has raged unchecked across parched Central Texas for days, leaving hundreds of charred properties in its wake and causing thousands of people to flee.

At least two people have died in the wildfire, which destroyed nearly 800 homes and blackened about 45 square miles in and around the city of Bastrop, outside Austin, the state capital.





http://www.wheels.ca/columns/article/799774