Truck burns in Toledo; $50,000 lost
Traffic on the Southern Highway came to a standstill on Saturday morning when a delivery truck caught fire and blocked the road. According to driver Alfonso Witz of Southern Grocery Supply in Punta Gorda, around eleven a.m., he was just a few miles from the dump when flames licked up from the engine. Witz told News 5 he and his side man, Jose Chub, tried to get control of the blaze but it quickly got the best of them.
Jose Chub, Sideman
“It come with smoke and then with fire. Big, no small. One time then I jump out of the truck, but I drop.”
Alfonso Witz, Driver
“The side man jump out of the truck, I nearly kill he. Because when he see the fire, cause the fire just blaze big, when it blaze big, he see it and he jump out when he jump out. I stop the truck and at the same time try put on the hood for it. The fire me done big already.”
“We had time to stop, but when we were putting sand on the machine, the truck start again, because all the hoses burst and they nevah have no brakes again. So I hurry gone in and put it against the hillside.”
“We’re going to be losing a lot of stuff, no insurance on it.” (Exhales)
Janelle Chanona
“You don’t know about how much worth of goods you have in there?”
Alfonso Witz
“About sixty thousand.”
Janelle Chanona
“Sixty thousand?”
Alfonso Witz
“Yes, about sixty to seventy-five thousand.”
According to the Witz family, they believe the cause of the fire to be the result of an electrical short. The grocery storeowners now estimate the total loss to be around fifty thousand dollars. Neither the goods nor the truck were insured.
