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Fire at NASCAR driver Biffle’s home caused by gas leak
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The fire Friday at the Mooresville, North Carolina home owned by NASCAR’s Greg Biffle was caused by a gas leak according to the driver.
According to the Iredell County Sheriff’s Department, firefighters were called to the home after police responded to a burglar alarm call. When they arrived at the home on Doolie Road, deputies thought the alarm had been set off by a lightning strike from a line of thunderstorms that had just passed through the area and noticed damage in the front of the home.
Deputies contacted the fire department who responded around 6:30 a.m.. Fire fighters spent about 30 minutes getting the fire under control. No injuries were reported but officials Friday put the damage at about $20,000.
Biffle who is at New Hampshire Motor Speedway with NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series preparing for Sunday’s Sylvania 300, said that the fire was apparently started by a leaking gas fixture.
“What happened is it was early in the morning, it was raining, and neighbors said they heard something. They thought it was lightning. There was no lightning in the area, but it was raining real hard.” Biffle said. “The front porch has damage, the upper balcony in the front of the house. As they sat there and looked at it, one would think it maybe got hit by lightning or something like that made sense, but it was one of the gas light fixtures.”
“We have gas lights on the upper balcony at the front of the House,” he added. “One of the gas lights, something happened to it and it blew out. It had a leak in the line or something and it leaked gas into an exterior column on the front of the house. That column isn’t on the house, it’s outside of the house, but it leaked gas in there and exploded. Stucco and some other stuff got blown out into the front driveway. It was a hell of an explosion that people heard all the way up the street.”
Fire officials spent most of the day Friday trying to determine what exactly caused the fire. At first they thought it was a lightning strike, but later determined the gas fixture was the problem.
“Gas blowing up makes a pretty loud explosion, so somebody thought it was lightning,” Biffle said. “It probably sounded like lightning.”
Biffle, who had moved into the home only two weeks ago, said him and his wife weren’t home at the time of the fire.
“There were people at the house,” Biffle said. “My pet-sitter was there with my dogs and, of course, it startled them obviously. The alarm went off and the security camera has all the footage of what took place and you can see the stuff blowing off of there.”
As for the damage, Biffle isn’t able to put a dollar amount on it, but said it seems minimal.
“There isn’t any damage to the house or inside the house,” he said. “It’s just an upper balcony on the front of the house that has some damage on one side. It was probably a two-foot by two-foot column that probably filled with gas on the inside because it’s hollow and that ignited, so it wasn’t lightning. It was a malfunction of whoever installed the stuff or how it was designed or built or something. I don’t know what the answer is yet, but those are the preliminary findings. It happens, I guess.”
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