Late Night Blaze Destroys Food Truck, North of Beatrice

BEATRICE – Beatrice Rural Firefighters battled a stubborn fire in a food truck late Wednesday night, one-point-five miles north of Beatrice.
Rural and City fire resources were dispatched to a rural residence along South 1st Road, north of the intersection of 19th and Dorsey.

22959 South 1st was the vehicle fire location, sending authorities to the scene at 10:42 p.m. The initial call reported a man was inside the vehicle, but a Gage County law officer and a firefighter at the scene later said no one was inside the vehicle, or injured. A Nebraska Fire Marshal investigator was summoned to the scene to assist in finding the cause of the fire.

Beatrice Rural Fire Chief Matt Langley said, "He decided that the heater malfunctioned inside the unit. They had turned the heater off when they left, about nine o'clock in the evening. It was determined that either the heater malfunctioned itself, or something adjacent to the heater caught on fire".

Fire trucks and an ambulance and around 15-to-20 rural and city firefighters responded to the scene. Firefighters called for mutual aid for a water tanker truck, from the Pickrell Fire Department. Firefighters obtained water from a city hydrant at 19th and Dorsey. About 5,000 gallons of water was used to douse the flames.

"There's a fair amount of material, paper goods that was being burned in the back...the storage area for the food. There's also an oil fryer that was burning up pretty good...where the bulk of the flames were shooting up, from".

The Food truck had a trailer that housed propane bottles, but they had been shut off before firefighters arrived. Firefighters battled flames coming from the truck for about an hour, with some firefighters using a ladder to climb onto a nearby house and spray water on the flames from above.
"There were some vehicles parked close nearby, as well as the house. So, we kept an eye on both those. The fire damage was to the food truck, itself", Langley said.

The red-colored food service van has been doing business around the Beatrice area.

Langley said it took some time to gain control of the fire. "We did some cuts on the vehicle to get a little more access from the outside until we could make an entrance to knock out the flames from the interior. That took some time...we had to cut an access hole to try to get some water in. Once we got the bulk of it knocked down, we were able to send a crew inside to knock out some other spots. Then we started digging around for some hotspots...some problem areas that may flare up later".

There was no damage estimate available yet, from the fire. The fire was extinguished just before midnight. Beatrice Rural Firefighters wrapped up work at the scene, just before two a.m.