KINGSTON -- A garbage truck caught fire Monday morning on Wyoming Avenue in Kingston.
Crews had to take all the trash out of the truck and spill it all over the avenue to put out the fire, leaving a mess and closing part of the street to traffic.
The fire started around 9:30 a.m. It appears the fire probably started somewhere on top of it, but firefighters couldn't find exactly what was burning inside. All the trash had to be thrown out of the truck and onto the 500 block of Wyoming Avenue, making for a big, stinky mess.
The fire department believes cardboard inside the truck caught on fire, but crews couldn't put it out because so much of it was compacted, so all the trash had to be thrown out of the truck and onto Wyoming Avenue.
"We tried to get it from the top of the truck but that failed, so we ended up dumping it on the avenue, extinguishing, spread it, let the air get at it. We attacked it with two lines, and that put the fire out," explained Kingston Fire Chief Frank Guido.
The fire forced part Wyoming Avenue to close for about three hours while crews called for another garbage truck to take away the debris.
"It's a big mess, hope they get it cleaned up," said Jessica Evans.
"You know when you burn your tires, when you're going too fast? That's kind of what it smells like, between burned garbage and burned rubber," said Christina Edwards.
The owner of the garbage company, Waste Reduction and Recycling, has never had any of its trucks catch on fire like this.
"It's a freak thing," said owner Joe Valenti. "What happened is they load the cardboard over and what I think happened is a piece of cardboard caught the exhaust, and it got dumped in the hopper and it sparked a fire."
No one was hurt. Crews are now investigating exactly how the fire started.
