Pine Mountain Georgia Fire Department News

July 9, 2009
Quint Used to Battle Truck Fire on Interstate

Pine Mountain’s Quint 1201 was called to assist in extinguishing a tractor-trailer fire on I-185, Thursday, July 9.

It was about 7:00 a.m. and the truck was traveling south when smoke began appearing around the rear of the tractor.

The driver pulled into the emergency lane and quickly emptied his on-board fire extinguisher onto the fire which continued to burn. The fire spread from the tractor to the trailer which was loaded with bales of paper products.

Firefighters from Northwest Harris and Antioch were first dispatched to the scene, responding with engines and tankers.

At times during the firefighting effort, southbound traffic was completely halted, but most of the time a single lane of traffic was kept moving.

Complicating the incident, the intense heat of the burning paper products began to melt the aluminum siding of the trailer.

Further assistance was requested from the fire departments of Hopewell, Pine Mountain and Pine Mountain Valley. Hopewell responded an engine, Pine Mountain was requested to respond the Quint and Pine Mountain Valley responded a tanker.

Tankers supplied water to Quint 1201, which used the elevated ladder and waterway to maintain an elevated fire stream on the burning material.

A high pressure fire stream was initially used to combat the fire but it was soon learned that water under lower pressure actually did a better job of extinguishing the fire.

Once the major part of the fire had been extinguished, handlines were used to attack the remainder of the fire. A trackhoe broke apart the bales of paper products which were hauled away on dump trucks.

Quint 1201 was released from the scene after about three hours of work.

Some of the Antioch and Northwest Harris firefighters remained on the scene for about 12 hours.

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