VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — Patrick Davis takes the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel multiple times a week as part of his route, driving for Quantico Creek Sod Farms Inc. He was heading back to Maryland last Wednesday morning when, at first, he thought he saw fog at the other side of the tunnel. It was just before 2 a.m.
“I’m through it every night,” Davis said. “I’m like, ‘I’ve never seen fog in the tunnel.’ Got a little close, and I was like, ‘That is the unmistakable smell of a fire…’ And then out of the smoke appeared a gentleman screaming, ‘Stop, stop. Truck’s on fire.’ He turned out to be the truck driver.”
Davis stopped right as he was coming out of the tunnel closest to Virginia Beach. He first called the bridge authorities to get traffic shut down and then called 911.
“Cars were already slamming on brakes behind me,” he recalled.
Davis said he got out of his truck to talk with the driver. He told Davis that his phone, other belongings and the fire extinguisher were trapped inside his flaming truck.
“When you go down into the tunnel, you got those concrete walls,” he described. “It appeared, for whatever reason, he may have impacted that.”
Traffic had to turn around. Davis had to back his semi-truck out of the mile-long tunnel as fire trucks started rushing in. The aftermath was a small disaster zone. It was fully loaded with frozen chickens, creating a massive mess alongside the wreckage. In a picture from Davis, you could see just how unrecognizable the truck became. The trailer burned down to its skeleton. Being so close to the fire right when it happened, Davis said it hits home as a fellow truck driver.
“You always have that what if,” Davis said. “Like, ‘what if he drifts over, what if I drift over, what if there is a fire…’ But you never think it’s going to happen, and then when it happens, it just kind of makes you think, ‘OK, we could have been coming out as he was coming in, we could have collided with him.'”
He urges other truck drivers to stay alert when driving through this long bridge-tunnel.