Garbage dumped in Seven Fields to work truck fire
Fire broke out in the back of a garbage truck Friday, Oct. 13, at the intersection of Dorchester Drive and Reston Court in Seven Fields.
The load of trash was dumped onto the street so firefighters could put the fire out.
Capt. Doug Mellinger, Adams Area Fire District, arrived on the scene at 9:02 a.m. — just nine minutes after dispatch reported a working garbage truck fire.
The first engine arrived two minutes later.
“Just the contents were on fire when we came up and they were already putting extinguishers into it and had the bulk of the flames out,” Mellinger said. “But the minute they stopped with the extinguishers it would flame back up again.”
With the truck too full from finishing its route of bulk loads, including furniture, Mellinger said crews were unable to douse the flames from the outside.
“We had no choice but to dump the load so we could get the fire out,” he said. “We couldn’t let him go down the road with flames shooting out of it.”
Mellinger had the driver move the truck away from storm drains and homes to a level cul-de-sac on Dorchester Drive before dumping its contents.
The driver left the vehicle uninjured as crews then smothered the smoldering trash.
“Something in the load ignited it, but we don’t know what,” Mellinger said. “Just in the little bit we pulled apart, I’ve already found two different things that could have caused it.”
With the variety of contents from the borough’s bulk pickup day, however, the true cause was impossible to determine.
“I saw a bunch of different batteries,” Mellinger said. “If you’re throwing away batteries, wrap them with electrical tape so that the negative and the positive ends can’t touch anything else.”
He warned that all batteries risked sparking during compaction if incorrectly disposed of — especially nine-volt batteries — and reminded the public not to throw away lithium-ion varieties.
“Lithium-ion battery fires are on the rise,” he said. “Big time.”
Additionally, Mellinger said the truck was carrying “piles and piles” of grass clippings.
“If you move them enough, they start to give off a little heat,” he said. “Just through the natural process of deterioration, they will catch fire — they heat up.”
While the fire had been extinguished by 9:45 a.m., crews remained on standby as the disposal company arrived to clear the trash from the street.
“We’re going to have to stick around, that way if it does light back up while they’re trying to load it, we can spray it down,” Mellinger said. “It’s just to be safe. We don’t want to put it on another truck and have it go down the road and catch fire.”
He said he expected the cleanup effort to take about an hour.
“We’ll make sure it’s completely out and they’ll haul it away,” Mellinger said. “Then their mechanics will take care of whatever they need to with the truck and make sure it’s OK to either be driven or towed.”
