A witness to a vehicle fire on the Napier-Taupō highway early this morning has praised the actions of truck drivers on the scene, saying they prevented the blaze spreading.
"I just had been sleeping at one of the drivers' rest areas, and I woke up to a whole lot of sounds of explosions," Angela Payne said of the incident at Titiokura Saddle.
"And then saw in my rear-vision mirror that there was a truck on fire - well, I thought it was a truck but it was actually a trailer unit."
"So I jumped out and had a look to see what was going on because there were trucks parked right in front of me, so I couldn't actually go forward.
"There were flames everywhere and there were no people about, but the drivers were actually on the other side of the truck to where I was so I couldn't see what was going on."
The drivers were working to prevent the blaze from spreading, Payne said, and she believed they'd saved the truck by their actions.
"The truck drivers had the situation under control, and then I just took a little video snapchat and while I videoed there was a big boom, and stuff started going up and then I stopped videoing, got further back and then there was a huge explosion."
One of the truck drivers told Payne the trailer was full of dangerous goods, she said, adding that the second explosion "sprayed all this flaming gloop everywhere".
"They said that the trailer brakes overheated. All the truck drivers rallied together and worked really well as a team to keep each other safe and attend to the situation and just basically isolate it.
"As far as I was concerned it was just a big ball of fire."
Police said they were notified of a truck on fire on State Highway 5 at 3.13am, but did not attend.
Fire and Emergency NZ crews sent seven fire engines to the incident.
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