Practical Joke Gone Wrong

[antryg]

This article appeared in The Dallas Morning News. I don't know if it serves as a warning or just makes another case against the quality of an American high school education. Either way is sure is a good thing thy had adult supervision.

FRISCO – It started out as a joke. Buy a junked car with no engine and haul it to the school parking lot as a memento from the Class of 2003.

But they never delivered the punch line.

While students from Trinity Christian Academy – under parental supervision – worked on the car inside a garage Saturday, gasoline fumes caught fire, spreading flames throughout the garage and extensively damaging the house near the Stonebriar Country Club and Golf Course.



LARA SOLT / DMN
Jill Cain, 21, surveys the damage to the garage at her home on Pinehurst Drive in Frisco.
The gag was supposed to cost about $50 for the car. It wound up doing $1.1 million in damage to the home and its contents.

The teens were draining gasoline from the tank when a spark or heat from an electric drill or cutting torch used earlier to "decorate" the car started the fire, fire officials say.

"It was a very safe prank, we thought. It wasn't supposed to have gas in it," said homeowner Wendy Gillen, 56, who supervised her daughter, Lindsey Cain, 18, and friends while they worked on the car.

Lindsey's classmates had planned to leave the car in the parking lot of the Addison school when they graduated. The school then would have had to figure out how to get rid of the car because it had no engine, said Ms. Gillen and her husband, George Gillen.



LARA SOLT / DMN
Jill Cain comforts her mother, Wendy Gillen.
When the fire started, the Gillens tried to use a fire extinguisher, but it was too small for the flames, they said.

No one was hurt, and even English bulldog Winston made it out safely from the $463,000 home in the 4900 block of Pinehurst Drive. The fire threatened neighboring houses, though no damage to other homes was reported.

Frisco Fire Chief Mack Borchardt said that removing the gas from the car was the right idea but that students should have worked on the car in an open space and asked a professional mechanic to drain the tank.

"We realize everyone out there had the best intentions," the chief said. "Everyone needs to be mindful that vapors from gasoline travel. It's not just where you see the gasoline. It's in the air."

The blaze did extensive damage throughout the house. Piles of debris sat in the house and yard Monday afternoon. Damp insulation, bedding, shoes and stuffed animals had begun to smell of mildew.

A baby doll, her dress and blond hair covered in soot, lay sprawled in the front yard.

Next to the junked car in the three-car garage was a fully restored, dark-blue 1947 Lincoln Continental – charred and covered in soot.

Insurance investigators will determine this week whether the Gillens must tear down the brick walls or inside walls.

The Gillens salvaged their family pictures and dining room furniture that once belonged to Mrs. Gillen's grandmother. But their piano, 40 percent of the books from their library and everything in the garage was lost.

Mr. Gillen, 57, a semi-retired prison minister, compared the prank and the ensuing disaster to the 1978 film Animal House. In the movie, which revolves around a series of fraternity pranks, a horse that was sneaked into the dean's office dies after someone shoots a gun into the air.

"Of course, they didn't plan on the horse dying," he said. "We didn't expect this."

[ 04-29-2003, 10:26 PM: Message edited by: antryg ]

[Dreamer128]

As the Dutch would say; "even Apeldoorn bellen". [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[Kakero]

hmm..it could have gone worst, they could have been charge with some criminal charges.

[Jorath Calar]

Prank? thats just stupid... oh no they would have to figure out how to get rid of it because it had no engine ?!?!

Are these people familiar with the concept of a Towtruck?
Worst prank ever... [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Azred]

I live here. Frisco, that is. This sort of "not quite on planet Earth" mentality defines this town. Most of the lunacy comes from the fact that the median income here is about $80,000 annually (yes, the median, which means 50% of the population makes more than that amount) and there is nothing to do here but shop. No museums, no symphony, no infrastructure of culture whatsoever with the possible exception of the new ballpark. *sigh*

[antryg]

You really had me fooled Azred. All this time I thought your "high above the metroplex" meant you lived in the Goodyear Blimb I keep seeing over Texas Stadium and now I find out you are a flatlander North of Dallas. I'm sooo disillusioned. [img]smile.gif[/img]