Car Owner Details How Exxon Fire Started
1996 Bentley was at the center of Thursday's fire at Vauxhall Road and Millburn Avenue
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The smell of gasoline mixed with burned materials filled the area on Friday as the Exxon Gas Station building was torn down and investigators looked through the remains after Thursday's destructive fire.
Fire investigators, police, firefighters and Occupational Safety and Health Administration representatives were on hand at the corner of Millburn Avenue and Vauxhall Road. A crane ripped down a portion of the building as they worked to determine the official cause of the fire. An official cause of the fire has yet to be reported.
But Paul Bilhuber, of Ridgewood Road, knows what happened when the fire broke out around 10 a.m. He was in the building and it was his 1996 Bentley Turbo R where the fire started. It's a car he loved and one he said many people complimented throughout Millburn-Short Hills.
"I just came in to get my fuel filter and my fuel pump fixed," he said in the parking lot adjacent to the gas station Friday morning.
He frequently goes to the station for routine maintenance, and Thursday was one of those days. He asked the mechanic to change the fuel pump while he changed the filter. It was during that process the gas line cracked, spilling gas on the floor, he said. The gas mixed with the oil on the floor, making for a slippery situation.
The mechanic slipped and fell onto his back. As he fell, Bilhuber said, his inspection light fell to the floor, the light bulb broke and the broken bulb lit the gas on the floor.
The gas erupted into flames and Bilhuber said one of the other workers saved the mechanic's life by extinguishing the flames on him. The mechanic was taken to the hospital, but is now home with only minor injuries to his hands.
"It was unbelievably fast," he said of the speed of the fire. "It was like a cartoon. It couldn't have been scripted."
The fire was so hot it melted the aluminum off his Bentley, Bilhuber said. "The engine was made of aluminum," he said. "It turned to liquid." A total of 11 cars were damaged because of the fire, including the three inside and the eight parked outside.
