MELFORT — The Melfort and District Fire Department responded to a report of a vehicle fire involving a Petro-Canada fuel transport truck on Highway 3 east of Melfort.
On the morning of Jan. 4, a fire started on the vehicle’s rear set of wheels. The driver was able to get out and knock the fire down by using a combination of portable fire extinguishers and snow from the ditch.
The Melfort and District Fire Department said his early recognition of the problem and quick actions resulted in very limited damage to the wheel unit.
“He made the right decisions and he used the right tools essentially at his disposal, but we want to caution people that any time that a component of a vehicle is burning there is a high probability of injury,” said Jason Everitt, chief of the department. “The smoke that is produced by that is highly toxic so we want to make sure that people are safe when they make the decision that they’re going to put the fire out – make sure they’re not exposed to the smoke or other hazardous products of combustion.”
The firefighters established a safe traffic control corridor and monitored the wheel unit with a thermal imaging camera until sufficient cooling had occurred. The thermal imaging camera is used by the department to measure temperatures to the degree of environments or objects.
Once the wheel unit cooled sufficiently and it was determined that the wheels were not seized, the department escorted the commercial vehicle onto a nearby grid, off the highway, where it could safely wait for support units to arrive to transfer the fuel.
The department ruled the fire to be caused by mechanical failure of the rear brakes.
“We appreciate the motoring public that was bypassing the incident,” Everitt said. “We had traffic control setup and traffic was permitted to travel in one direction at a time and everybody respected that and there was no issues. So that’s really important for us to make sure the public is commended for their actions and keeping us as safe as well.”
