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A plow truck caught fire Saturday afternoon at a busy Midtown Anchorage intersection, sending one person to the hospital with minor injuries.
The call about the vehicle fire came in just before 2:45 p.m. Saturday, said Assistant Chief Alex Boyd with the Anchorage Fire Department.
The truck was located in a turn lane on C Street at International Airport Road, Boyd said. Photos and video posted to social media showed smoke billowing from a truck with a front plow and a layer of snow in the bed, parked by a snowy median on northbound C Street.
C St & International Anchorage, AK Anchorage Police Department Anchorage Fire Department Station 1 Anchorage Fire Fighters Union Local 1264 Anchorage Office of Emergency Management
Posted by Stephen Conrad Spann on Saturday, December 17, 2022
Sitka resident Camille Ferguson was in Anchorage for a state wrestling tournament that her grandson was competing in over the weekend. She, along with her daughter Mary Ferguson and her granddaughter Trista Elixman, drove by the scene soon after the truck had caught fire.
“We noticed the flames in the truck. And then when we got close, we seen there was a guy in there,” Camille Ferguson said.
She said her daughter, who has a background in law enforcement, immediately decided to pull over the car to help.
“Both of us jumped out, and ran to the door. We opened up the door to try to help him out because flames were in the cab. And we grabbed his arm and just started pulling as hard we could,” Ferguson said Saturday evening.
Eventually, the women were able to pull the man free of the cab despite a large snow berm partially blocking the door, she said.
The experience was surreal, but Ferguson said she was proud of her daughter for her instinct to help.
“My daughter was pretty amazing,” she said. “She knew exactly what we were doing: We were stopping.”
Authorities aren’t sure yet what caused the fire, which resulted in minor injuries to the truck’s occupant, said Boyd, the assistant fire chief.
That person was taken to the hospital to be treated for his injuries, Boyd said.
The truck did not strike any other vehicles, and appeared to be at rest when it caught fire, he said.
An investigation into the cause of the fire was ongoing.