A Pennsylvania garbage truck was forced to dump its fiery load onto the road after a resident disposed of a bucket of pool chemicals with the rest of his trash.
The incident happened in Lancaster County this September, the result of a chemical fire, which led to a huge pile of trash being dumped onto a residential street.
According to police, an Econ Refuse Service truck was forced to offload its trash haul on the road to prevent the fire from spreading to the truck itself. Police said the fire was quickly extinguished, and the truck was undamaged.
“We are very thankful for our friends at the New Danville Fire Co. and Pequea Township Police Department for their help this morning,” Econ Refuse Service said on its Facebook page. “Earlier today, pool chemicals reacted with other trash and started a fire in the back of one of our trash trucks.
“Luckily, the driver and loader took quick action to offload the trash to keep the fire from spreading. The fire was extinguished with no damage to the truck. The burned trash was disposed of, and the road was cleaned of all debris. Most importantly, no one was injured.”
Garbage truck fires are more common than one might imagine, according to Waste Pro, a nationwide waste service company that deals with 15 or 16 garbage truck fires a year. They say the usual causes are paint products, pool chemicals, or hazardous materials such as gasoline. Other causes are materials from hot grills, like charcoal, and lithium-ion batteries.
According to Robert Norton, the
This is hazardous trash. Dispose of safely. General Manager at All Waste, Inc., “Most refuse or recycling truck fires start with improperly discarded items that wind up in the load, not resulting from anything wrong with the truck.”
Load fires can heat the truck’s compressed natural gas storage tanks, raise pressure, and cause them to release natural gas from the pressure relief valves, making the situation much worse. In most cases, leaving a burning load of waste inside the body of a collection truck will result in the total loss of the vehicle. Therefore, the standard operating procedure in most garbage truck fires is to immediately discharge the burning load as soon as possible.
That’s the reason the Econ Refuse service truck left a pile of burning garbage on a residential street.
It is important that the public know that they should not throw out anything flammable, such as pool chemicals, weed trimmers, propane tanks, fuel cells, lighter fluid and similar materials. People’s lives are at risk.
Authorities say residents should contact their local solid waste district on how to properly get rid of hazardous materials.
