Fire Forces Driver To Exit Just After He Entered I-90 Eastbound Interstate Lanes Closed, But No Injuries Reported
A Post Falls man was forced to flee his burning pickup truck, closing eastbound lanes of Interstate 90 for nearly an hour Thursday afternoon.
David Smathers was on his way home when his white 1992 four-wheel-drive Dodge Dakota Sport pickup truck caught fire as he entered I-90 from the State Line onramp.
He had been on the freeway only seconds when a woman in a passing car motioned to him and yelled, “Fire! Fire!”
Smathers, 20, was carrying a 5-gallon container of Kure-n-Seal 800, a sealer made of ethylbenzene and xylene, and two 1-gallon jugs of muriatic acid in the bed of his truck when it erupted in flames. Fearing the highly flammable chemicals might explode, Post Fall firefighters called the Kootenai County hazardous materials truck to the scene.
“Once we got here and put the fire out, we still didn’t know what might be in the bed,” Ron Graham of the Post Falls Fire Department said at the scene. “That’s a big concern when you don’t know what hazardous materials might be in the fire.”
Smathers, who works for D.S. Inc. Concrete of Rathdrum, Idaho, had left a job the company was working on at Liberty Lake just minutes before.
“The lady pointed to me, and I looked back and saw fire,” Smathers said. “I went across the bridge like a bat out of hell.”
Once across the bridge joining Washington and Idaho over the Spokane River, Smathers slammed on the brakes and skidded sideways to a halt, blocking the right lane of I-90 eastbound, just inside the Idaho border.
“I wanted to get out and find a way to put it out, but there was no way I could,” he said.
Almost an hour after the fire started, Washington State Patrol troopers and Idaho State Police officers reopened one of the eastbound lanes. By rush hour, traffic had sped up to a crawl. Cars were backed up bumper-to-bumper for nearly four miles.
Finding no way to put out the fire, Smathers snatched at his possessions frantically as flames danced closer to the cab. He managed to save only his lunch box and a manual for work before backing away from the flaming truck. His wallet, a CB-radio still dangling from the mirror, and tools were among the items lost in the blaze.
More than of the truck’s exterior was blackened by the fire. Meanwhile, the taillights and interior melted into a crumpled black mess. Smathers bought the truck about a year ago and said he was fully insured.
“I just went to the cab and got out what I could,” Smathers said as he slumped dejectedly on the bridge’s concrete shoulder barricades. “I got one load out and went back for more and said, ‘No, I can’t do that, it might blow.’ So I got back and stayed back.”
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