Car bursts into flames in weekend of mayhem | Wairarapa News | Local News in Wairarapa

Three groups of Wairarapa travellers escaped injury during a weekend of traffic calamities that included a vehicle bursting into flames on the Rimutaka Hill Rd.
A family were travelling over the Rimutakas toward Wellington towing a float with a horse they had just bought in Hawke's Bay, when a fire broke out beneath their 4WD just after 4pm on Sunday.
The driver pulled over on to a shoulder and the five people travelling in the 4WD were able to pull gear from the flaming vehicle and unhitch the horse float before pushing it away from the flames.
Colin McKenna, of the Featherston fire brigade, said the vehicle was ''pretty well alight'' when his crew arrived. ''They were about three-quarters of the way up the hill but were still able to pull off the road quite easily, so they were pretty lucky in that case.''
A witness, who declined to be named and was travelling ''a few minutes'' behind the 4WD, described the owner of the horse, a teenaged girl, and her mother as looking ''quite stressed'' when she arrived at the scene.
''I came around the corner and there was this white 4WD covered in huge flames. The whole bonnet was on fire and there was black acrid smoke billowing 10m into the sky.
''Then I saw the horse float and realised there was a horse in it, so I pulled over to offer help but found they had disconnected the float and the horse was just standing there in it, quite calmly.
''The owner had just bought him that day and was crying. She was pretty hysterical and her mother was comforting her.
''It was a shocking sight to see.'' Neither the horse nor any of the passengers was harmed.
Meanwhile, police say a woman had a lucky escape after her Mitsubishi Delica skidded across oncoming traffic on State Highway 2 on Friday morning.
The driver was heading north and approaching a roadworks sign about 2km north of Clareville when the car skidded into a fence at about 8.50am.
In the third crash of the weekend, a four-door Ford hatchback was left crumpled against a tree in Worksop Rd, Masterton. Police say the driver lost control of the vehicle about 10.30pm on Saturday.
Masterton police traffic Sergeant Chris Megaw had received witness reports of people fleeing the vehicle and said inquiries were continuing.