A Casella garbage truck driver dumped a load of trash that was on fire in an empty lot on Kenduskeg Avenue when he saw smoke and bubbling paint Wednesday morning.
The fire could have been started by multiple things, Assistant Fire Chief Chandler Corriveau said.
“[The driver] called and said he noticed that the back of his truck was on fire from something he picked up along his route sometime today. Could be anything from wood-stove ashes to lithium-ion batteries,” Corriveau said.
When the driver noticed the smoke, he pulled into an open parking lot at a former senior living center at 509 Kenduskeag Ave.
The driver made a good decision to come into an empty lot and avoid dumping the trash into the road, stopping traffic and making it more difficult for firefighters to contain, Corriveau said. If the fire would have kept burning in the truck, hydraulic fluids may have ignited and caused a larger fire.
“To have to dump this off in the middle of the street or not be able to dump the load off, now you’re dealing with the trash fire, then we have a truck fire,” he said.
The trash will be cleaned up later today by Casella, Corriveau said.
