A quick-thinking mum who pulled her two children from a burning car before it exploded says she’s lucky to be alive after the near death experience.
“I had a guardian angel looking after me and my boys today that’s for sure,” Catherine Mayes wrote on Facebook, sharing a photo of her four-year-old Mazda CX-5 engulfed in flames. “This was the ultimate wake up call that life is short and can be over in a matter of minutes, that lives are so much more important than possessions.”
The mum-of-two was pulling up to a park at Gordon Adventure Playground in Canberra when she noticed the replacement battery pack that was recently installed in her vehicle “popped open and made a fizzing sound”.
Seconds after she grabbed her five-month-old Hunter out of the car and ran away from the smoke with her 20-month-old son Tommy in her arms, the car exploded and burst into flames. CCTV footage captured the harrowing moment.
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“I quickly got Tommy out and as I was getting him out it exploded and let out a crazy amount of smoke and started to catch fire so I raced to get Hunter out,’ Ms Hayes wrote.
Lucky to be alive, Ms Hayes says she’s most grateful for the fact that she escaped the situation unharmed.
“I am so lucky that it happened while I wasn’t driving, and that I went into auto mode and got my boys out of the car and away from danger,’ she wrote. “I was just like autopilot like, I need to get my babies out,” Ms Hayes told Nine News.
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