Must see video: Fiery, deadly truck crash on Capital Beltway. Vehicle drives past cops, burning truck & burning bridge. But they get the pictures.
Watch the raw video as driver rides past burning rig & bridge (Warning: Language might be offensive to some.)
WUSA9.com slideshow
This, to me, is quite interesting and I am not sure what to make of it. In the WUSA9.com report above by Surae Chinn is a brief video by a motorist who happened upon a burning tractor-trailer on the Capital Beltway in Forestville, Maryland (I-95 South at D’Arcy Road in Prince George’s County). The person who shot the video is in a vehicle returning from the University of Maryland Baltimore County around 11:00 last night. The fire was the result of a three vehicle crash that left the truck driver dead on the scene.
What I find fascinating (and I know I shouldn’t be surprised) is, looking at the raw video, the people in the car with the camera see the fire under the bridge ahead, drive past six police vehicles on the right side of the road (by my count) and then continue under the burning overpass anyway so they can get their pictures and get where they are going.
Obviously, we don’t know how long the police had been on the scene at the time this video was taken and what they were up against. I imagine a priority would soon be to keep others out of harm’s way (particularly those who aren’t thinking clearly enough to do it themselves).
The fire extended from the truck cab to the underside of the bridge. Sheets of plywood and wooden supports had been previously installed on the underside of the bridge to prevent crumbling concrete to fall onto the Beltway. Brush fires ignited and travelled up the embankments towards Darcy Road. Firefighters were successful in stopping the fire extension into the trailer portion of the 18-wheeler. The trailer was about 25% loaded with bags of sugar.
Incident commanders immediately requested additional resources to the Beltway and to Darcy Road to deal with the fire. A total of 60 firefighters and medics were on the scene on-board 10 pieces of apparatus and numerous command and support vehicles. Both loops of the Beltway and Darcy Road were shut down while the fire was being extinguished which required about 45 minutes.
