Oct. 20--All's Oxi-Active detergent, as its makers like to trumpet on TV, has been known to stop a tough stain or two in its time.
It also stopped traffic for about three miles Wednesday morning on Interstate 68 west.
A tractor-trailer hauling a load of the detergent caught fire at about 6 a.m., snarling morningcommute traffic between the Pierpont Road and Sabraton exits. It took no time for the fire to spread, the truck's driver said.
"I heard a couple of pops and that was it," Abner Garnier said. "I saw flames."
Garnier was hauling his cargo from Maryland to Tennessee for Western Express Inc., a transport company in Nashville, Tenn., when the fire broke out near I-68 Exit 4, at Sabraton.
The pops Garnier heard were the sounds of tires exploding on the side of his rig. From his driver's side rearview mirror, he saw flames peeking out from under the truck. He muscled the rig to the side of the highway and tried to fight the fire himself -- at first.
"I ran for the fire extinguisher," said Garnier, who has been driving for the company for seven months, "but everything was moving so fast."
So fast that by the time a tanker from the Brookhaven Volunteer Fire Department rolled up minutes later, the truck's cab had bur ned itself all the way down to the frame.
"They don't take long," Brookhaven firefighter Rayanna Wolfe said. She and fellow firefighter Jamie Swiger were the first emergency responders to arrive -- just in time to see a charred husk of a truck cab consumed by the rest of the flames.
She was glad the detergent didn't go up with the rest of the truck, since that decreased the risk of the cargo steaming into a potentially toxic cloud as the fire did its work.
"Detergents can be tricky," said.
The accident remains under investigation by West Virginia State Police.
