When a driver of a vehicle smells smoke as he’s traveling to a destination it’s generally not a good thing. When the same drive notices smoke coming from the back of the same vehicle, it’s definitely not a good thing.

 

However, if you happen to driving a large enclosed truck and the contents in the back consists of shredded paper documents, it can be an alarming thing. Such was the case late Tuesday afternoon when the driver of a Shred-It truck ran into the above situation.

 

“I smelled it at first and then I noticed it when I looked into the mirror so I got the vehicle off the road,” the driver said.

 

As it turned out, the location of the incident served this particular situation well. Near the intersection of Jerry Dove Drive and United Hospital Center, the driver was able to get his vehicle parked in the parking lot of the Mountaineer Medical facility just inside the entrance to UHC along Medical Park Drive. Once there, a quick call to 911 remedied the situation Tuesday.

 

Bridgeport Fire and EMS responded to the scene. With the Bridgeport substation within just a few hundred yards of the site the situation didn’t escalate.

 

A member of the Bridgeport Fire Department said that they were able to get the blaze, which was confined to the covered back end of the truck, under control quickly. The driver of the truck said, fortunately, it wasn’t a full load.

 

There was little, if any damage, to the back end of the truck outside of being sprayed with water and the paper debris being weighed down from the water.

 

The call to 911 went out at 4:58 p.m.