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Hot Coals Spark Fire in Waste Management Truck
1 Min Read
In Auburn, Wash., a Waste Management driver was alerted by an unusual smell halfway through his recycling pick-up route. Cody Singerson’s truck started on fire shortly after that, and he followed training procedures to try and stop the fire himself.
He used the truck’s hydraulic push to compact roughly one ton of recyclables in an attempt to push the air out of the fire, but that did not work. Singerson then made the decision to pull off the road into a Fred Meyer parking lot, where he used a fire extinguisher to try and stop the fire until the fire department arrived.
Both Singerson and the truck survived the fire, which he thinks was caused by hot coals in a recycling bin.
KOMO has more information about the incident:
When Cody Singerson was midway through his run picking up recycling totes in Auburn on Tuesday, the Waste Management driver smelled something that made him nervous.
A couple of stops earlier he saw something come out of a bin, and it's something he says he's seeing far too often.
"Some ashes came out, but there's really not much you can do because they are inside the bucket," said Singerson, who say he then saw smoke. "I was hoping it wasn't me."
But it was. Another look back and he saw flames coming out of the top of his rig. As he has been trained to do, he used the hydraulic push inside the trucks container to compact about one ton of recyclables in an effort to squeeze the air out the fire.
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