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Rally car starts forest fire

24/03/2006 13:45

Author: John Oxley

CAPE TOWN - Fire fighters are battling to contain a blaze in the Cape's Franschoek forests started when a car taking part in a national championship rally left the road.

The car, a Subaru believed to have been driven by all-girl team Lola and Megan Verlaque, went off at Ida's Valley just outside Franschoek, and the blaze is believed to have been started by the heat of its engine turbo-charger igniting undergrowth.

The rally crew was unhurt.

It is not yet known whether competitors in the rally, which finishes tomorrow, will be stopped from using further stages in the forests.

Landowners in the region are naturally nervous after many of them lost plantations - and some of them their homes - in blazes in the region at Christmas time which destroyed more than 180 hectares of forest.

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