A truck hauling explosive materials caught fire in Boone, NC on Tuesday morning. The driver was traveling on US 421 when he noticed smoke coming from the truck. The truck was carrying around 2,000 pounds of explosives at the time of the incident. Authorities have assured the public at no time were the explosives on fire. Boone Fire Assistant Chief, Mike Teague, said “He immediately pulled over, bent back there, and felt like there was something in the undercarriage of the vehicle that was on fire. (The driver) discharged an extinguisher on it to make sure that he was suppressing any possible fire and, of course, we were dispatched.”
Teague went on to say “We did kind of a multi-prong approach. We had part of our crews, addressing the truck, figuring out what was going on and then we had remaining staff and crew that started shutting highways down into the area and created a buffer zone around it in case things progressed. The biggest concern is if the truck degrades and starts burning, then that’s going to have an impact on the storage that’s on the truck. We needed to determine if the truck that was on fire or producing the smoke, or do we have something coming out of one of the storage areas.”
Truck carrying explosive material malfunctions, causes traffic delays Tuesday morning
