Fire Critic An Unadulterated View of the Fire Service
A tanker carrying a lot of flammable “stuff” wrecked and caught fire in Hazel Park Michigan. The fire occurred directly under an overpass. The bridge “overpass” later collapsed due to the heat and fire. You can watch the video here. I took a screen shot of the video at one point where it shows a single firefighter hitting the fire with some water. The image caption might be “pissing in the wind”. We have all been there though…The first in engine to a lot of fire and not enough firefighters on scene to do much about it. You gotta do what you gotta do and in this case it meant this lone firefighter manning the line. I am sure they had plenty of time to put bigger lines in place and put the fire out.
I would have rather had more water and reach from a solid tip on a deck gun or aerial waterway so I didn’t have to get so close to that fire though. You never know when a secondary explosion could occur.
Text below and photo (taken from video) from CNN.com
A tanker was traveling south on Interstate 75 about 8:30 p.m. in Hazel Park near the Nine Mile Road overpass when it exploded, Lt. Shannon Simms of the Michigan State Police Metro North Post in Oak Park told CNN.
The force of the explosion went upward, causing the overpass, carrying two lanes in each direction, to collapse, he said.
“We’re unable to determine the number of vehicles involved at this point,” he said. Nor, he said, had investigators determined the cause of the crash.
He said firefighters would have to bring the fire under control before investigators would be able to determine whether anyone was killed.
