No one was hurt Monday night when a U.S. Postal Service delivery truck went up in flames for an unknown reason at Jamestown and Sunshine Hill roads in Sonora, California
Video taken at the scene by former Union Democrat photographer Maggie Beck, who lives in the area, showed fire fully engulfing the truck that was parked along the side of Sunshine Hill Road at the Jamestown Road intersection.
“I couldn’t tell what it was until I started walking down and then I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s a mail truck,’ “ Beck said.
Kristina Uppal, a spokeswoman for USPS based in San Francisco, said on Tuesday that she “can confirm a USPS truck did overheat and required a tow truck to transport the vehicle.”
Uppal said the carrier and all mail that was originally in the vehicle were loaded safely in a new vehicle and brought to the USPS station supervisor before the tow truck arrived.
Emily Kilgore, spokeswoman for the Cal Fire Tuolumne-Calaveras Unit, said the call came in at 8:54 p.m. and firefighters were at the scene by about 9 p.m. The blaze was fully extinguished by 9:08 p.m. before it could spread to anything else, she said.
