BROWNSVILLE, Ore. - As the flames surged from the fire along Interstate 5, Adam Spencer could feel the heat through the cab of his truck.

Then he realized the load of baled straw he was hauling was on fire.

Suddenly, he was hauling a flaming load of straw with some 200 gallons of diesel fuel in his gas tank.

"I knew right then and there that there was going to be some serious issues, but there was no getting away from it," he said.

No getting away from it, except to jump.  That's the only way Spencer knew he'd be safe from the traveling fire ball. 

"Straw this time of year is like gas," he said. "I mean it goes up pretty quickly and within a minute my truck was melting down."

Firefighters continued to mop up Friday after a fire ripped through the Mitchell Rock quarry near South Jefferson. The fire burned roughly 75 acres around the Quarry, on Roseburg Forest Product Land. That was just one of 10 fires reported along nearly 50 miles of I-5 on Wednesday.  As of Friday evening, investigators still do not know how those fires started.

Spencer is one of the victims of the fire. Initially, officials thought his truck caught fire and then started the fires. Further investigation revealed that the truck was not the source of the fire.

The Brownsville truck driver and father of three was hauling down I-5 Wednesday when he noticed firefighters battling a blaze along the road. 

He thought it was safe to pass, like all the cars, but soon Spencer says "one of the blazes caught my truck on fire."

Flaming debris torched his straw. 

"I knew something was going to be wrong right after I went through that big flame.  Suddenly I could feel the heat through the cab," he said.

His load teetered and he worried the flaming straw would hit his cab.  He jumped out not a second too soon, considering his truck also carried 200 gallons of diesel. 

"If the caps wouldn't have exploded off the tanks, it could have been a big boom," he said.

Firefighters were too busy fighting the grass fires to try to rescue his truck. So he ran to safety and watched as black plumes filled the sky -- and his independent business went up in smoke.

"That's my blood and tears and everything put into it, it's all gone," he said.