A truck laden with about 27 metric tonnes (or, almost 60,000 pounds) of brunost cheese caught fire in a tunnel in Norway last week, causing a raging fire that burned for five days. The truck driver says he was about 1,000 feet into the tunnel when he noticed his cargo of dark goat cheese was aflame. Officials suspect the high sugar and fat content in the brunost and its arrangement on the truck caused a rapid spike in its temperature, leading to the fire, which badly damaged the interior of the hillside tunnel and left clouds of toxic gasses looming around the tunnel’s entrances for days, the BBC reports. The driver escaped from the flaming cheese inferno unscathed, and the tunnel will be closed for a few weeks until it can be repaired. For now, at least, a small part of the country smells like raclette, and citizens are shocked. “I didn’t know that brown cheese burns so well,” says the director of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration. Head toward the molten dairy center of Norway’s fiery goat cheese tunnel of doom, just ahead.
Tunnelbrannen slukket [NRK]
Norway goat cheese fire closes tunnel [BBC]
