A Seattle woman was fatally injured after her 2011 BMW went off the road, down an embankment and burst into flames Saturday night near the end of Minnie Rose Lane NE and Lovgreen Road.

Police found the woman’s car down a 15-foot cliff after they responded to a report of a fire in the woods at about 10 p.m. March 9.

“They were told it appeared to be a trash fire,” said Bainbridge Police Chief Matthew Hamner.

Instead, officers found the BMW fully engulfed in flames.

Then came a series of small explosions that sounded like gunshots. Police began searching around the car — it couldn’t be quickly identified because the plate and vehicle badges had all melted off — looking for occupants.

A lieutenant from the Bainbridge Island Fire Department called out that a body was near the driver’s side door. The search continued for other victims that could be close to the car.

The BMW continued to burn. Then the battery exploded and it sent white sparks into the air, igniting a nearby tree. Officers said flames shot up 25 feet in the air.

Hamner said Officer Joseph Fastaia was able to grab hold of the person on the ground, later determined to be the 68-year-old driver, and pulled her away from the burning BMW.

A Bainbridge officer retrieved a stretcher and made it back down the cliff to the car. The embankment was described as nearly vertical near the road, and the terrain at the bottom, a boot-grabbing mud where you’d sink six inches before stopping.

“There were five people trying to get her up the embankment, it was so steep,” Hamner said.

The woman was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where she later died. She was not immediately identified, pending notification to her next of kin.

It appeared the woman crashed after traveling down Lovgreen Road and then deciding to make a U-turn.

“We do believe that alcohol was involved,” Hamner said, according to officers’ observations at the scene.

Police don’t know when the BMW went off the road before someone saw flames down in the trees and called 911. It may have been some time, as the fire looked like somebody’s bonfire.

“We don’t know how long she was down there,” Hamner said.

The deadly crash was the first fatality accident on Bainbridge Island roads this year. There have been 42 vehicle collisions so far this year on the island, according to city officials.