Experts Ponder What Trapped the Limo Victims

The death of five women in a limousine that erupted in flames on the San Mateo Bridge Saturday night has left auto safety experts puzzling over why they were not able to escape.

"You need to do an investigation that looks at the issue of entrapment in the vehicle," said Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety in Washington, D.C.

Were the doors locked at the time? Did the vehicle have emergency exit windows? Did the quick eruption of the fire block access to the exits? Were the passengers aware of emergency exit options? These were some of the questions that experts are asking.

Five women died and four escaped with injuries in the stretch 1999 Lincoln Town Car limousine that was carrying nine friends to to a bridal party at a hotel in Foster City. The vehicle has two rear doors providing access to the passenger compartment where the women were seated. 

Whether doors were locked and the time it takes to unlock them can mean the difference between life and death in the type of fire that quickly engulfed the rear of the limousine after it pulled over, Ditlow said.

"In a matter of seconds, you can have flames enveloping the entire occupant compartment," he said. "Were the doors locked and did they have to release the locks?"

San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault said the five who died were found next to the partition between the passenger and driver compartments. The fire engulfed the rear of the vehicle.

Details on how the four surviving women escaped were not clear.

The driver of the driver, Orville Brown, said they squeezed through the partition window into the driver's compartment, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. California Highway Patrol officials said Monday they could not confirm the report. Other, earlier news reports said three escaped through one of the rear doors and that a fourth went through the partition window.

It appeared that those who died were trying to get through the partition opening and could not, according to a preliminary assessment of the situation by law enforcement officials.

CHP Cmdr. Mike Maskarich said investigators need to talk to the survivors to confirm how they escaped, according to the Chronicle. He said the CHP has not determined whether the rear doors were operating properly.

The fact that the five who died were found next to the partition could mean that the flames were blocking access to the rear doors, auto safety experts said.

Photos and video of the fire showed large flames consuming the rear of the vehicle, including the area were the doors are.

The intensity of the flames suggested that it was fed by a highly volatile fuel, such as could be found in a leak from the fuel tank, said Albert Ferrari, an Oakland-based safety engineer who consults on auto accidents and malfunctions.

Ferrari cautioned that information disclosed to the public so far, however, makes it impossible to know what happened exactly.

"You have a matrix of possibilities," he said. The doors should have been able to be opened from the inside, assuming the passengers could reach them, he said.

An online manual for the vehicle indicates that the 1999 Town Car was equipped with child-proof locks that can be controlled from inside the vehicle, an autolock system for the doors and front-compartment controls for all door locks.

With such a fast-acting fire, the five who died could have quickly suffocated or been made unconscious by smoke inhalation, said Byron Bloch, an auto safety consultant based in Potomac, MD. 

On whether emergency exit or push-out windows might have been installed in the vehicle, Ferrari said such windows are typically found on buses, though he said he doubted whether it would have been required on a limousine.

The website of one manufacturer of emergency exit windows says passenger vehicles are required to have such windows if they carry a certain number of passengers that varies by state. Patch has asked the California Public Utlities Commission about the requirement in California.

"That (whether such a window was in the vehicle) is something to look into," said Ferrari, "but whether or not there is such a window doesn't do much good unless the passengers know it's there and know how to use it."

Limousine companies may or may not inform passengers about emergency exit procedures. A comment posted by a customer of a limousine service in Sacramento in 2011, Victory Limousine, said the customer was "stunned" because this service was the only one he had ever seen where the driver took time to explain the emergency exit procedures.

"As soon as we all get inside the limousine the driver very politely showed all of us on how to use the interior features and also explained us the emergency exit safety features which stunned me because the previous limousine companies that we have used never explained us anything," said the comment posted by "Ken."