Houston firefighter puts out truck blaze with beer

Capt. Moreau was on his way back from Austin with his wife when they came up on the fire. He got it under control spraying beer all over it. Capt. Moreau was on his way back from Austin with his wife when they came up on the fire. He got it under control spraying beer all over it. Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Houston firefighter puts out truck blaze with beer 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

A Houston firefighter spent his day off Monday fighting a fire with beer.

Capt. Craig Moreau was with his wife on a trip back from Austin on Texas 71 when the couple came across an 18-wheeler with smoke pouring from the brakes.

"The brakes had caught and the tire was burning," said Moreau, who initially fought the fire with a small extinguisher the driver had on board.

"I crawled underneath and thought we'd got it out but it flared back up," said Moreau, who was off duty at the time. "So I said to the driver, 'what have you got in here?'"

"It's beer! It's all beer," the driver said of his cargo of Coors Banquet beer.

Moreau said the pair started spraying and shaking cans of beer as fast as they could. Meanwhile, the tire continued to burn and eventually exploded.

Fortunately, the beer worked and the blaze was eventually extinguished.

"I have no doubt if the beer hadn't been there, the whole trailer would have burned up," Moreau said. "A few more minutes down the road and it may not have worked."

The unlucky driver told him he had just come from a shop where he had his brakes fixed.

Moreau said he has stopped before to help people while off duty, but had never had an experience quite like this.

"It's in our nature to help folks, but this is the first time I've done it with beer," he said.

Praising the sacrifice of perfectly good beer, Fire Chief Terry Garrison said in a statement, "I support the extinguishment of fire, no matter what the cost."