It was a gray, sunless, wintry, Saturday afternoon in December. There was nothing remotely remarkable about it. Woke up made breakfast for my mom and myself. The only major errands for the day: a Costco run & exchange a Christmas gift afterwards. Not unlike any other day—except for this trip south on the Garden State Parkway—wasn’t like any other.

After getting on the Parkway south I set the cruise control for 65 & sat back and hunkered in for the drive to Costco in Manahawkin listening to my “Big Up” Apple Music reggae playlist. Nothing out of the ordinary—until somewhere between Forked River entrance and the Waretown exit, traffic started slowing down & in the distance I could see think black smoke. Were the Pine Barrens on fire? That’s not out of the realm of possibilities; it’s a natural phenomenon. Or was it something else?

Garden State Parkway Fire Map

It’s the kind of thing you see in a movie, or on TV—not often in real life. It’s a bad situation no matter how you look at it. Hopefully the person/people in the car got out. And thankfully it did not spark any brush fires either.

I’m not usually one of those: got to get a video at any cost … kind of people. But my phone is on a mount on my dashboard & it was easy and safe enough to grab 60 seconds of video driving by.

Once I got to Costco, I did a quick edit and posted it to Facebook. Once done … I did my shopping, returned my shirts and went home. I was trying to see if I could see where the accident occurred while driving back home north bound on the GSP. But nope. It was put out and traffic returned to normal—from what I could see.

And so it goes …

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December 29, 2019, 1:36 PM

Joe Streno added a new video.

Holy sh*t Batman! Something you don’t usually see on the Garden State Parkway south heading to Costco in Manahawkin! The heat coming off that thing was intense as I drove past! Hope no one was in it!

Screenshot