Shortly after midnight on August 1, Gundagai Fire and Rescue were called to reports of a truck fire north of Coolac on the Hume Highway. On arrival, crews found a truck carrying toilet paper with a detached B-trailer that was on fire. Several Fire and Rescue NSW and Rural Fire Service crews worked together to contain and extinguish the blaze.
Andrew Brock of Gundagai Fire and Rescue said, “Fire and Rescue and RFS were paged just after midnight to a suspected truck alight. We had crews responding from town, and the local Coolac Brigade were first on scene.
“The B double trailer was fully involved with fire. Thankfully, it was only toilet paper that was on there, and the driver had been able to disconnect the A trailer and prime mover.
“Crews got on scene. Fire and Rescue weren’t too far behind the first arriving RFS crew, and everybody got to work. Thankfully, there was no impact on the highway because the truck driver managed to pull over into the rest area. Good thinking from the driver, and he was a little bit shaken up, obviously, but other than that, no injuries. Unfortunately, the trailer was a complete loss.
“We have seen an increase in hazmat rescue and fires along the Hume, and that is understandable because there has been a significant increase in truck movements throughout the whole area, and unfortunately, it’s just part of the risk of transport.
“We are not anticipating things will slow down as much as we would like them to, but this is what we are here for, and we’ll just tackle any emergencies that keep popping up.
“We’ve got additional resources at our fingertips, and Gundagai is very fortunate that we have a very good working relationship with the other services within the area, so there is no them and us, we are all here to do the same job, and we all just want to be able to go home with everyone safe.
“We are fortunate enough that like this incident, we ended up having to bring a bulk water carrier from Cootamundra. This just goes to show that within the South West Slopes zone and what we call region South 2 for fire and rescue, we have a very good relationship and everybody just gets in, helps one another out because we all just want to go home as early as we possibly can.
“There’s always an investigation with any incident. You could have a suspected cause, and that may be a mechanical failure. We are just thankful that nobody was injured on this particular incident and that the driver had the good sense to pull over as quickly as he could, put it into an area that made it safe for firefighters as well to tackle the blaze because working on the highway, if they just pull over on the side on the shoulder there, that becomes an extremely dangerous environment for emergency services workers. We are very appreciative of the efforts that the driver put in, even though, unfortunately, the company lost their trailer.
“Like all things, we just hope that it doesn’t keep increasing, but this is life. We will just keep protecting the community as best we can and doing what we do best.”
– Jack Murray
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