Smelling burning plastic and smoking under hood while engine is off
 

This might be a NEW one for this forum... I have a 2001 Sebring Lxi 2.7. Last night I was driving a short distance from my place, thankfully, I was stopped at a red light when I noticed my gages were acting screwy. I had not driven the car all day and had only been in it for a few minutes by this point. While still at the light I started to smell burning plastic so I immediately pulled into a close parking lot and shut the car off! What was going on under the hood is really hard to explain. First off when I opened the hood up black smoke came rolling out and the smell was an unbearable plastic burning smell. I thought that my care was going to catch fire! It was a dark out so I had my cell phone light trying to find out where the smoke was coming from but I could not tell. There was something battery fed still running for about 10 minutes after I turned the car off because it was loud and you could hear the motor of what ever was running. It might have been a cooling fan motor or something close by, either on the engine itself or near the radiator fan. Now its sitting in some random parking lot completely dead. I went back this morning to try an start it but the battery was completely dead. Please help I need options. Thank you in advance for any info I can use...

You have a short circuit somewhere. You need to have it repaired. The car is now going on 14 years old and it may very well cost more to trace down and repair the problem than the car is worth, depending on the amount of damage done and the difficulty involved in tracing down the cause of the problem. Nobody here can begin to assess the problem. It will take a careful examination by a knowledgeable technician.
You might want to look over your insurance coverage to see if fire damage is covered. If in doubt, call your agent.