Fire Truck!

A garbage truck is engulfed in flames along Fowler Avenue in downtown Carmel. Eric Gross Jim Tompkins couldn’t believe his eyes: the trash hauler employed by Tompkins Disposal Service of Carmel stopped his rig along Fowler Avenue in the county seat last week to pick up neighborhood rubbish. After dumping a pail into the recently refurbished bright yellow truck, Tompkins noticed a fireball on the ground beneath the engine compartment of the rig.

Tompkins told the Courier he called 911 and attempted to extinguish the flames with a fire extinguisher kept in the cab of the truck. When that didn’t work he ran into the X-tra Mart Service Station and Convenience Store and asked for help. An employee gave him another hand-held extinguisher, which also proved useless as the flames quickly engulfed the truck, which had been parked adjacent to a propane gas tank.

In the interim, an alarm sounded for the Carmel Fire Department, located directly across the street. Firefighters under the command of Assistant Chiefs Robert Lipton and Vincent Ruggerio responded minutes later to the 8:35am emergency and doused the flames with water and foam, but not before the vehicle’s gas tank ruptured from the excessive heat. No one was injured.

As fire crews were mopping up, two vehicles collided in a rear-end crash on Route 52 when the first auto stopped abruptly and the second driver apparently took his eyes off the road to check out the burning truck. Neither driver complained of injury.

Assisting at the scene were members of the Carmel FD Fire Police, Carmel Police Officer Mike Williams and Sgt. Edward Dazi, Putnam County Sheriff’s Department personnel, the Putnam County Fire Investigation Team, which traced the origin of the blaze to an electrical malfunction, and a representative of the Putnam Bureau of Emergency Services.