A vehicle fire shut down Highway 4 near Port Alberni for more than an hour on Tuesday.
A pickup truck hit a tree around 2 p.m. near Cathedral Grove and caught fire.
A video sent to CTV shows a helicopter dousing a vehicle with water.
Firefighters with the Coastal Fire Centre and the Port Alberni Fire Department also attended the scene.
Alan Fraser, who witnessed the crash, says the elderly man driving the truck made it out.
He says he was impressed with the response he saw from both fire crews and people passing by.
“Everyone is scared Cathedral Grove is going to go up and everyone was panicking that the fire trucks are not able to get through there because traffic was so backed up,” Fraser said. “Everyone has used or exhausted their fire extinguishers, but it wasn’t working. It was going up in flames pretty quick and the ground around it caught fire as well.”
Fire officials say with the dry conditions, any fire along the brush is a dangerous situation and they were “lucky” with this one.
