{"id":328015,"date":"2026-03-13T17:17:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T17:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/328015\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T17:17:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T17:17:17","slug":"northern-motorway-truck-fire-residents-woken-by-explosions-and-smoke-after-rig-bursts-into-flames","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/328015\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Motorway truck fire: Residents woken by \u2018explosions\u2019 and smoke after rig bursts into flames"},"content":{"rendered":"
Wainui resident Glen McLean, who lives about 100m from the incident, said he was jolted awake by the loud \u201cbang\u201d of exploding tyres about 1.40am. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe did not know at that stage they were the tyres, we just heard explosions. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt woke a large portion of our neighbourhood up because the smoke was travelling across a significant amount of houses \u2026 I\u2019d say around 50 houses were getting washed by the smoke. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very shocking to be laying in bed and hearing the explosions and not knowing what it was. It was a little bit confusing. Once we got up, the fire services were there very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Mainfreight truck caught fire on SH1 near Silverdale about 1.30am, waking up nearby residents.<\/p>\n
McLean drove to the other side of the motorway to inspect the incident, where more tyres exploded with \u201ca toxic smell coming from the truck\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were very loud. It was no joke \u2026 It could have been a much bigger explosion. In your mind you\u2019re thinking [it\u2019s a] 9kg LPG tank exploding, but it wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tanker driver Cam Ferguson, who stopped to help the stricken driver, said the fire was burning fiercely. <\/p>\n
\u201c[The] driver had a tyre blow out which caused damage to the rear underside of the truck, causing the fire. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe managed to get it off the road and attempt to extinguish it, but the fire, being rubber, relit after he emptied his extinguisher.\u201d<\/p>\n
Firefighters contain a truck fire on Auckland’s Northern Motorway. Photo \/ Hayden Woodward<\/p>\n
He said the driver had tried to wave down other passing trucks, which didn\u2019t stop. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was about five minutes behind and by the time I got there it was too far engulfed to attempt to use my extinguisher from my truck.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ferguson said \u201cthe driver did all the right things and did very well in the circumstances\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a friend and work mate, so I stayed with him until we got the all clear and gave him a ride back to base in Whang\u0101rei.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mainfreight country manager Carl George said the truck driver was safe. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe driver is okay and no others involved in the incident.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wainui resident Glen McLean, who lives about 100m from the incident, said he was jolted awake by the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,95,3952,118564,3595,1875,9525,123200,2079,34981,564,42,296,440,5165,3945,43,7977,530,176624,3948,40,38,41,39,23857,3608,8211],"class_list":["post-328015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-and","tag-aucklands","tag-bursts","tag-by","tag-carrying","tag-caught","tag-explosions","tag-fire","tag-flames","tag-food","tag-headlines","tag-into","tag-local","tag-loud","tag-motorway","tag-news","tag-northern","tag-residents","tag-rig","tag-smoke","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-truck","tag-were","tag-woken"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}