Several Cars Catch Fire At Vacaville Apartment Complex

VACAVILLE (CBS13) - A frightening scene unfolded at the North Point Apartments complex in Vacaville on Saturday morning when several cars caught fire.

It's not the way you'd want to wake up in the middle of the night, with chaos outside your window. It was 2:30 in the morning when Jessica Howell heard a commotion outside her apartment off Leisure Town Road. She knew something was wrong.

"I don't see anything but I can hear a man yelling, 'I'm moving, I'm moving,' and then a car sped off. So I go over and wake [my husband] up, 'hey, hey something's happening outside,' " Jessica said. "And then I heard the man yell, 'there's a fire, there's a fire.'"

Jessica's husband, Matt, heard an unsettling sound. At first, he said he thought it was a gunshot.

"I kept hearing the loud pops which turned out to be tires exploding. But it sounded like gunshots and there were people yelling," Matt said.

Seeing flames in the carport, Jessica banged on her neighbor's door and told them to get out of the building.

"Just the right gust of wind could have sent the flames anywhere, so we knew we just had to get out of the building," Jessica said.

Little did the Howell's know, their car was one of four on fire.

"When she came in and told me there was a fire, I looked down the stairs and I'm like 'Oh my God our car is on fire!' Matt said.

The Howell's grabbed their boy, their dogs, and a box of important papers and got out of their apartment. They're not angry about losing their car.  They're just relieved they're all OK.

"Really, it's like we're going to have to get a new car but everyone's safe and fine. We're good. We're taking it pretty well," Matt said.

"We're not telling our son he lost Buzz Lightyear, but he knows everything is replaceable," Jessica said.

It all comes as the Howells were already preparing to move out of the apartment complex. Now they'll move with one less car. One of the burned cars was towed immediately. The Vacaville Police Department is investigating how the fire started.