PHOTOS: On a hot September day in Texas Hill Country, the fire picked up, its flames popping the Jeep’s burning tires and airbags like plastic chip bags. Thirty or 40 feet away, a crew of firefighters, law enforcement, and forensic anthropologists watched the burning wreckage from the safety of a white canopy, while a firefighter in full protective gear waited, his hose at the ready.
Inside, a figure sat motionless in the passenger seat.
Until the fire began, the crew’s choreography — setting up temperature-gauging thermocouples, readying cameras, unspooling the firehose — evoked a buzzing film set. Now all was still but the melting car. After several minutes, a thermocouple on the Jeep’s ceiling read 1,100 degrees, triggering a timer. At that temperature, termed a flashover, heat becomes so intense that anything capable of catching on fire does.