No one was injured in a fire that destroyed a step van on July 29 at about milepost 61 on Highway 20.
Passing motorists helped driver Wes Ogren of Toledo remove a load of personal possessions, belonging to his passenger, from the van.
Mary Cheshier and her daughter Natasha were moving from Newport to bend.
As they headed into the pass, the van overheated twice, Cheshier said. Both times, they stopped and let it cool down.
The third time they pulled off to let it cool down, a small fire had started underneath the van, Cheshier said. The vehicle was smoking badly.
Ogren thought one of the brakes might have been dragging at first, he said. He got out of the van to check it out. When he learned it was a fire, he jumped back in and grabbed valuables then went to work unloading the back.
“No one had an extinguisher,” Cheshier said. “Four people were bringing things out. They risked their lives. They really did. If that would have hit that gas (tank), they would have been toast.”
They got about half of the load out of the truck, Cheshier said. “It didn’t matter. There were no lives lost.”
Cheshier said she tried to get Ogren to stop unloading the van. He told her the fire hadn’t gotten to the gas tank yet, but she didn’t hear him and was worried while he and the others unloaded it.
“If I had five more minutes, I could have pulled everything out,” Ogren said.
He called the 1989 Ford cargo van “Old Yeller,” Ogren said grinning, and now, “it really is an ex-Ryder truck.”
The van was worth about $3,500, he said. It had 294,000 miles on it with its second engine and transmission.
That’s more than the distance from the earth to the moon, he said.
Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District, Sweet Home Ranger District and Oregon Department of Forestry responded to the fire. Oregon Department of Transportation helped make arrangements to transport the victims and their possessions to Bend.