By Steve Neavling
Five rental vehicles hired by President Joe Biden’s Secret Service detail went up in flames earlier this week in a parking lot at Nantucket Memorial Airport.
The Secret Service rented the vehicles while the Biden’s were in Nantucket on their annual Thanksgiving vacation.
A preliminary investigation found that the culprit appears to be a Ford Expedition that was under recall for a faulty battery, The Detroit Free Press reports.
“The Secret Service had rented the vehicles for the president’s trip and dropped the SUVs off at Hertz on Sunday night,” Anthony Guglielmi, Secret Service communications chief, told the Free Press on Wednesday. “We were made aware of one Ford SUV catching fire early Monday morning. That SUV was parked next to several other vehicles which also caught fire because of the proximity to the Ford SUV. We had no issues when we drove the vehicles and they were returned without incident. The Ford SUV that caught fire was a Secret Service support vehicle and not used to transport any protectees.”
The vehicles that were damaged included a Chevy Suburban, Ford Explorer, Infiniti QX80, Ford Expedition and a Jeep Gladiator.
Fire officials said it appears the Expedition caught fire and spread to nearby vehicles.
“There is nothing to lead us to believe it was intentionally started,” Fire Chief Michael Cranson told the Nantucket Current. “The investigation is pretty much complete. There was too much damage to determine an exact cause, so it’s going to go down as undetermined. It appears to have started in the engine compartment, but whether it was a battery issue, a fuel line issue, we don’t know.”
