ASHLAND, Ore. — “The tires were just exploding,” described Aidan Brown after a semi-truck hauling wine caught fire on I-5 Wednesday night, the driver at first unaware.
“One of the tires exploded and then he couldn’t disconnect the truck. And then it just caught on fire.”
Pop after pop, as each tire blew. Aidan and his brother, Pierce, immediately called the fire department.
“The explosion knocked things down in the house,” explained Pierce.
The whole thing was happening right next to their neighborhood — the fire-scarred Oak Knoll subdivision in Ashland.
In 2010, a fire flared to life among the very same homes. A fire so scary, even young Aidan vividly remembers it.
“On the 24th of August is the anniversary of the fire that happened here.”
Eleven homes burned down that day. Medford Battalion Chief Mark Burns ultimately lost his life from smoke inhalation.
And in this truck fire, worrisome moments for a firefighter who suffered heat stroke while fighting the flames along the side of the interstate on one of hottest days of the year so far.
Aidan says thankfully the lessons learned from the eerie memory of the fire seven years ago, helped today.
“Theres a brick wall over there and it’s that brick wall that stopped this from happening all over again, ’cause if it got down in the fields it would have started all over again.”
Aidan and Pierce grateful to firefighters for preventing history from repeating itself.
“They definitely saved the day.”
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