photo by: Contributed

Jane Lanham's 2023 Kia Sorento is pictured after it caught fire on June 30, 2024, north of Perry.

An Ozawkie woman says she is lucky to be alive after a sudden explosion under her car seat quickly engulfed her new car in flames and left her with blistering burns.

Jane Lanham, 70, was driving her 2023 Kia Sorento on June 30 to a gas station in Perry after dropping off her grandson with family when out of the blue she heard an explosion. The sound wasn’t coming from fireworks nearby, she realized, but from beneath her feet.

“That’s the first time I knew there was anything wrong. No indicator lights, nothing,” Lanham said.

On her route from Ozawkie to Perry, Lanham crosses three bridges, and if the fire had started while crossing a bridge where she couldn’t easily pull over and get out, her story may have had a different ending. After stopping the car and exiting, she could immediately feel pain on the back of her legs. She said she first tried to reach into the car to get her purse, but the driver’s seat was already on fire.

“My car exploded,” Lanham said. “It was under my feet, behind my legs. When it happened I was just working on instinct because in a second I pulled the car over. Had I been on the bridge or in traffic, that wouldn’t have happened.”

She ran around the vehicle to the passenger side and was able to get her purse that way, but then she thought of her laptop — that it might have been in the back of the vehicle.

“This was within a minute. I ran around and opened the hatch and, I guess, opening that gave it all the oxygen it wanted, and smoke and flames were coming out of the back,” Lanham said.

A passerby, who helped Lanham, yelled to her to get away from the burning vehicle, and as Lanham moved away from the car the fire engulfed the entire vehicle, sending a plume of smoke high into the air.

Lanham said the Perry Fire Department responded to her 911 call within minutes to put out the fire, and she was taken to the hospital for her burns to be treated. She said that she had second-degree burns and tissue damage on her legs and had to take a week off from her job working in the dormitories at Haskell Indian Nations University.

photo by: Contributed

A burn on Jane Lanham’s leg caused by a fire in her 2023 Kia Sorento.

She later got a call from her family, who said that they were stuck in traffic because there was a car on fire on the road.

“I got their call later because there was a car on fire, and I said ‘that would be me,'” Lanham said.

She reconnected with family later that day. When she saw her 12-year-old grandson, whom she had dropped off only minutes before the fire, he was sobbing as he hugged her, she said.

“He was just bawling. He was shaken up and totally emotional,” Lanham said.

She hates to imagine what would have happened if her grandson had been with her.

“Somebody (on the scene of the fire) asked if anybody else was in the car, and for a fraction of a second it had me terrified. So, I had to hold him and hug him to know he was OK even though I knew he was,” Lanham said.

She said investigators were working to determine the cause.

Lanham bought the Kia Sorento new in October of 2023. The make and model does not have any recall advisories that would cause a fire, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The two current recall warnings for 2023 Sorentos relate to the backup camera and to an airbag sensor.

However, Kia’s other crossover SUV, the 2020-2024 Telluride, was recalled in June and drivers were advised to “park outside and away from structures” due to risk of sudden fires.

“The front power seat motor may overheat due to a stuck power seat slide knob, which can result in a fire while parked or driving,” according to the recall advisory from NHTSA.

Lanham said that the emergency responders she met the day of the fire told her that they had seen similar incidents with Kias in the past, but the Journal-World couldn’t confirm a record of fires with the 2023 models.

She said she has been in contact with a number of attorneys across the country and has filed to join a class action lawsuit against Kia related to sudden fires.

Since the fire, Lanham said her burns have begun to heal and she can now walk without excessive pain, but the financial damages will be difficult to bear.

“That was the car I was going to retire in. I was going to retire next year and drive that car until I drop. Now that’s not going to happen,” she said.

photo by: Contributed

Jane Lanham

She said that she didn’t purchase gap insurance when she bought the car and that the insurance company will pay only the depreciated value of the vehicle and not the amount that she paid and financed the vehicle for. She said the insurance company has yet to inform her what that number will be, but in the meantime she is driving a rental car, which she will have to return in a few days.

She said her local insurance agent has been helpful and hasn’t sugar-coated the fact that Lanham will likely owe a fair amount of money on a car that was reduced to a smoking metal shell.

“Not all of the information was good, but she was telling me what I had to deal with,” Lanham said.

photo by: Contributed

Photos of Jane Lanham’s 2023 Kia Sorento after it caught fire on June 30, 2024, north of Perry.