Firefighters arrived on scene in the early hours of Sunday morning to projectiles popping and blowing into the forest and a semi-truck trailer ablaze.
The Hope Fire Department had been requested to attend the semi-truck fire outside of the department’s jurisdiction southbound on Highway 5 at the portion of the highway which meets Highway 3 by the Wildland Fire Service. Crews fought two fires throughout the day Sunday in the same trailer, which was carrying a mixed load including aerosol cans and small propane bottles.
“They were a risk. They were blowing into the forest and shooting out, projectiles from the trailer,” said fire chief Tom DeSorcy, describing the scene in the early morning hours. “It was poof, pop, pop. So basically we attended, diminished the risk to the wildland and cooled the truck as best we could.”
Nine firefighters fought the blaze from 3:45 a.m. until roughly three hours later. The department then cleared the scene.
Current situation Highway 5 Southbound just North of The 3/5 Split.
Posted by Ken Monkhouse on Sunday, May 20, 2018
Posted by Jon Berry on Tuesday, May 22, 2018
Three hours later eleven firefighters returned, this time at the request of the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. Some of the materials inside the trailer had re-ignited the fire.
“(The ministry) didn’t want to leave that truck sitting there smouldering, if you will, on a long weekend with a single lane of traffic through there. So they wanted it cooled down as quickly as possible so it could be removed,” DeSorcy said.
The second response took another four hours. The firefighters response stopped traffic initially, then the highway moved into one-lane traffic.
DeSorcy said he saw many passengers and even drivers filming the fire, potentially posing a danger to themselves, other drivers or fire crews working on the road.
“We don’t want to attend to one of our responders injured just because someone is looking at the scene and not paying attention to the road,” he said.
“It is the law in B.C., ‘slow down, move over’ whenever you approach emergency and service vehicles on the roads.”
Later on Sunday the department had a report of a brush fire in the Mallard Drive area, firefighters responded to what ended up being a backyard campfire.
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