An expensive blowout

[Rig of Jarkness]

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/lampre-lose-eur250000-of-kit-in-truck-fire

The Lampre-ISD team lost an estimated €250,000 of bikes and other racing kit when one of the team’s trucks was destroyed by fire on a motorway in north-east Spain. The fire broke out when a tyre burst as the truck was traveling on the AP-1 motorway near Burgos.
The explosion caused a fire to break out in the compartment containing the team’s bikes and other equipment. Although fire-fighters were soon on the scene, it took them almost four hours to put out the flames. They quickly had them under control but the heat was so intense that there was concern that they might flare up again. The incident caused huge traffic jams on the motorway. El Diario de Burgos reported that the jams stretched for 20km and took more than three hours to clear.

I had no idea that bikes were so flammable. 

[Cudzoziemiec]

Bikes have paint, rubber and plastics which are all flammable. I don't know if carbon fibre is flammable, but the resins in it probably are. Then there's the other kit - clothing and such like. And the truck itself, with fuel, batteries, etc. What I don't get is how a tyre blowing out can cause a fire.

[spesh]

Truck tyres are at much greater pressures than car tyres - a truck tyre blowout will fire off shredded bits of tyre with considerable force. It's a bit like setting off a hand grenade, and it could be the case that a piece of rubber punctured an aerosol can (I was initially thinking of the blowout rupturing a fuel line, but I'm not sure how easy it is to ignite diesel when it's not under compression in teh cyclinders).

[Cudzoziemiec]

Or if it wasn't an actual blow out but a gradual puncture. I remember being told that when a truck tyre gets a slow puncture, as the tyre deflates it gets overloaded because the whole axle sags towards that end, and so it overheats. This is why it's common to see charred, delaminated sections of truck tyre on the motorway.