WASHINGTON – We all saw the pictures and video from California last Friday, as about 20 vehicles were caught in a fast-moving wildfire that swept across Interstate 15 in the Cajon Pass.
Motorists were forced to run from their cars as the flames moved in.
No one was seriously hurt, but a number of drivers are seriously upset this week: They’ve gone to get their cars and been charged tow fees, sometimes huge ones.
Laura Caro tells the Los Angeles Times that she was driving her 80-year-old mother home from a doctor’s appointment when they were ordered from their SUV by a police officer. She pushed her mother in a wheelchair through the smoke and the obstacle course of stopped cars.
She got a lift home from some strangers, the Times reports, and when she went to get her car from a towing company, she was charged $1,600.
“It was just a nightmare,” she told the Times. “I didn’t do anything illegal to have my car towed.”
Another driver, Penny Freistroffer, tells the Times that California Highway Patrol officers told her that cars that weren’t burned would be left by the side of the road, and that drivers could pick them up free of charge later. Instead, her car had been towed and she was socked with a bill of $646.50.
The California Highway Patrol says they’ve contacted all the companies that handled towing in the wake of the fire. They say that tow companies can’t work for free, but that there is a cap on what they can charge.
Richard Monroy, the manager of Gonzalez Tow, which towed Caro’s car and others, says they’re giving refunds. Caro says she got that refund, but still feels “they should never have charged me in the first place.”
