A trash truck dropped its load on a neighborhood street in Manassas on Wednesday.
The truck caught fire while on Autumn Place, near Round Elementary School. The culprit: a lithium battery, according to the city.
Traffic/trash note: If you live on Autumn Place in the City of Manassas, there may be trash on your road as a lithium battery was disposed of improperly which caused a trash truck to catch fire. Trash will be picked up after the fire is put out.
— Manassas VA (@CityofManassas) May 26, 2021
We checked with American Disposal, which provides trash service to city residents, and it confirmed the source of the blaze was a battery.
An American Disposal spokesman said batteries should not be thrown in the garbage but taken to a proper recycling facility.
“We are seeing this more and more as lithium batteries become more and more common. Now a lot of this is an assumption because we can’t always find the source, but more times than most we will find a battery at the source of the fire. We have lost two trucks this year alone to fires that have started in the bodies of our trucks.
In this case we were lucky and we were able to safety eject the load in a safe manor without impacting the public. We were lucky in this instance and the cost was around [$3,000] for clean up, but our trucks are upwards of [$400,000], so a total loss is very significant. Not to mention the possible risks to the drivers and the surrounding pedestrians.
We also see this at our MRFs (recycle facilities). Monday we had a fire… that was lucky put out by our crews and the fire department.”
No injuries were reported in the incidents.
The fire in Manassas on Wednesday also comes five days after a battery recycling facility near Chicago went up in flames.
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