A woman and three young children had a narrow escape this afternoon after their car burst into flames on the M18 motorway in Co Clare.
The car was travelling north along the M18 at around 1.15pm when the woman noticed smoke coming form her vehicle. She managed to bring her car to a stop in the hard shoulder and evacuate the three children to safety.
Three units of the fire brigade from Ennis along with additional appliances from Shannon Town were sent to the incident which happened close to Crusheen.
On arrival at the scene, fire crews found that all four occupants had gotten out of the car unharmed.
Fire personnel implemented emergency traffic management procedures and used their vehicles to create a rolling roadblock to safely bring traffic to a stop.
Firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze however the car was destroyed. Once the fire was out, one lane of the motorway was reopened and traffic began to move slowly past the scene.
Incident on M18/N18 between J14 – BAREFIELD and J15 – CRUSHEEN (North) (03-Jun 13:06) https://t.co/nYOqNCZue6
— TII Traffic (@TIITraffic) June 3, 2018
Traffic Infrastructure Ireland staff also attended the scene and assessed what, if any, damage had been caused to the motorway as a result of the fire. Once the vehicle was safely removed from the motorway, traffic movement returned to normal.