A semitrailer went up in a blaze after its brakes caught fire and it went charging up a runaway truck ramp on Interstate 70 west of the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnels on Tuesday, April 30.

Charlie Stubblefield, the owner of the Silverthorne-based towing company Mountain Recovery, said no one was hurt in the incident but that the wreck was one of the most destructive he’s seen on the Straight Creek runaway truck ramp.

“We’ve never seen one that goes that far up the ramp and burns to the ground,” Stubblefield said. “That’s a first — where it’s been that massive of destruction.”

The Straight Creek runaway truck ramp is among the most used runaway truck ramps in the country due to the steep grades as I-70 descends from where the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnels cross under the Continental Divide.

Colorado State Patrol Trooper Gabriel Moltrer said that the state shut down westbound traffic through the tunnels shortly after a call came in around 5:40 p.m. Tuesday for a truck on the runaway ramp that had caught fire.

A Mountain Recovery employee was on scene within minutes and attempted unsuccessfully to put out the brake fire, which by 6 p.m. had grown to engulf the entire semi-tractor trailer with flames up to 40 feet, Stubblefield said. Both the driver and the passenger in the vehicle managed to escape before the truck went up in flames, he said.

Summit Fire & EMS wrote on social media the morning after the fire that firefighters were able to contain the blaze, even as it leapt to some nearby vegetation, sparking a small wildfire. The Red, White & Blue Fire Protection District also assisted.

“Summit Fire & EMS worked really hard to put it out,” Stubblefield said. “That’s an extremely challenging scenario for them and us because that runaway ramp is so dang steep. You have to pump a lot of water uphill, which is taxing on the firetrucks and firefighters.”

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By the time firefighters beat down the flames, the semitrailer — which was full of magazines — was in pieces, Stubblefield said. As firefighters moved into the overhaul phase, where any smoldering remains are put out, Mountain Recovery used a track machine to help spread the burning magazines out so water could be sprayed on them.

A Mountain Recovery rotator then dragged the largest pieces of the destroyed semitrailer to the bottom of the runaway truck ramp, where they were loaded onto trailers and hauled away, Stubblefield said. Smaller pieces of the wreck were loaded into dumpsters.

In total, the mission took 13 hours, including cleanup, Stubblefield said, noting that working on a runaway truck ramp can pose a safety risk. The Colorado Department of Transportation reportedly started reopening the westbound lanes of traffic around 6:30 p.m. and all lanes of traffic were flowing there by 9:30 p.m.

“We’re constantly at a major safety risk of another truck coming down the hill and not having the runaway truck ramp available for them, or they come into our scene with failed brakes and fire,” Stubblefield said. “It’s a chilling experience working up there for that amount of time.”