Firefighters from Pembroke and surrounding departments battled a March 6 tire fire near the courthouse for approximately 90 minutes before getting it extinguished.
The fire began around 10:30 a.m. in a tractor-trailer that was involved in a March 5 crash on I-16. The driver of the tractor-trailer was killed, according to officials, and the truck cab caught fire. Firefighters from Bryan County responded to put out that fire.
Afterward, the tractor-trailer was towed to Pembroke and parked in a salvage yard in downtown, where it reignited the following morning, Pembroke Fire Chief Richard Waters said.
“The best that we can tell is that it rekindled,” he said. “And you’re not going to put out tire fires with water. You need foam, because it builds a layer and suffocates the fire. Water, all it will do is run off the rubber, so it’s almost impossible to put out fires with water.”
The foam used by firefighters comes in 5-gallon cans and is mixed with water, Waters said — and Pembroke didn’t have enough to squelch the fire in the trailer.
Waters said the lack of foam and a shortage of available manpower Thursday led him to call for additional help.
Before it was over, approximately 30 firefighters from Bryan, Effingham and Bullich counties and Fort Stewart responded to help battle the blaze.
“We really appreciated the help from our mutual aid partners,” Waters said.
The crash itself is being investigated by the Georgia State Patrol’s Specialized Collision Reconstruction Team.