An African tourist says he could have head his head blown off if he had listened to the owner of a bullet-loaded trailer which burned to the ground on the Alaska Highway outside Haines Junction this week.

Ras Lumumba David, an Ethiopian resident and a citizen of Israel, told the Star Thursday he was shocked and appalled to learn the owner of burning storage trailer he was videotaping Tuesday afternoon near Silver City would lie to him about the fact he was transporting ammunition.

David, who is staying with a Whitehorse resident he met in a local grocery store, said he was on his way from Burwash Landing to Whitehorse on Tuesday evening when he stopped his car at the side of the road after witnessing the fire.

He said after he couldn't understand why the owner didn't tell him or other onlookers standing 200 metres away from the blaze that the trailer he was towing behind his vehicle was carrying bullets.

'I came down from my car with my camera,' David said.

'I asked him what was inside. He just told me there was a motorbike in there. I asked him there was any ammunition and he said no, and then the bullets went off.

'I could have been killed if I trusted what he said and went closer with my camera. Two hundred metres isn't far; bullets can kill you.'

A video of the incident viewed by the Star Thursday afternoon showed the trailer fire raging, and a series of gunshots coming from the trailer could be heard for about one minute.

A spokeswoman for the RCMP said this morning the Haines Junction detachment was alerted to the situation on Tuesday evening.

'We received a call on Tuesday at about 9:31 p.m. The driver of the vehicle (towing the trailer) was from the United States, a 35-year-old male,' the spokeswoman said.

She said the matter is not being investigated.

Kevin Taylor, the deputy fire marshall for the Yukon, said this morning he wasn't made aware of any fire on the Alaska Highway on Tuesday but the incident sounded concerning.

'Anything like a trailer fire or a car fire is really quite dangerous.

'The truck could be carrying something that could be dangerous like a propane tank or it could even be the shocks on the trailer that could explode,' he said.

'We were never contacted about anything.'

Taylor said his department may not have been alerted because the location of the incident may have been in a fire coverage 'no-man's land' in the territory.

Taylor said no-man's lands are areas far away from municipal boundaries where fire departments would not respond to a vehicle or building fire.

'We respond within our boundaries and sometimes a little further.'

If a fire occurs in a no-man's land location, he said, 'Chances are, you're on your own. We try to cover as much area as we can.'

Taylor said he wasn't sure if Wildland Fire Management would respond to a structure fire or would just protect the surrounding area.

Officials from Wildland Fire Management and the Haines Junction Volunteer Fire Department could not be reached for comment by press time this afternoon.