Truck bursts into flames on Route 1 in Orland

ORLAND – A brand-new Ford truck with only 500 miles on its odometer burst into flames Thursday afternoon on Route 1.

No one was injured in the freak accident.

“There’s no sense of how it started,” John Gray, chief of the Orland Fire Department, said. “It was in motion when it caught fire, and the damage was so extensive that we weren’t readily able to tell what started it.”

Gordon and Sally Huber of Wiscasset were driving their 2005 Ford F-250 to the Whispering Pines Camp Ground at 3:45 p.m. when they saw smoke and flames coming from the truck.

The couple got out, took the fire extinguisher from the attached camper, and tried but failed to extinguish the fire, Maine State Police Trooper Jessica Shorey said.

Firefighters responded quickly from their nearby station and were able to put the fire out by about 3:55 p.m.

Traffic along Route 1 was not backed up for long because the incident happened near the H.O.M.E. Co-op, where the road splits into four lanes.

“The burning truck just took up one of the lanes,” Shorey said.

The Hubers and their camper were towed to the campground by a volunteer firefighter, Gray said.

The incident is not under investigation, Shorey said.