CEDAR CITY — Firefighters extinguished a dumpster fire in a church parking lot in Cedar City on Wednesday morning.
The incident, which was reported shortly after 8:30 a.m., involved a roll-off dump truck carrying a large metal dumpster filled with household trash.
Cedar City Fire Marshal Mike Shurtz said the truck’s driver, after smelling smoke, quickly pulled into an empty church parking lot at 500 W. and 400 North, where he offloaded the burning trash onto the surface of the parking lot.
“The driver’s quick thinking saved the garbage truck from burning,” Shurtz told Cedar City News at the scene as crews were directing streams of water onto the still-smoldering pile of trash.
A total of eight personnel responded to the incident, comprising the crews of one fire engine and one brush truck, Shurtz added.
The firefighters were able to knock down the flames fairly quickly, he added.
After the fire had been put out, workers used a front-end loader and a steer skid loader to help load the trash back into the dumpster so that it could resume its journey to the landfill.
No injuries were reported and nothing was damaged other than garbage.
Shurtz said that while he’s not certain what ignited this particular blaze, he did offer a safety reminder about disposing of hot ashes, such as from a fireplace or wood-burning stove.
“Hot ashes should be kept in a metal container until completely cold,” he said, adding, “Although, we can’t say for sure that was the cause.”
Photo Gallery
Firefighters put water on a pile of burning trash that was safely offloaded into a church parking lot in Cedar City, Utah, March 8, 2023 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News Firefighters and other workers at the scene where a dump truck driver safely offloaded a pile of burning trash into a church parking lot in Cedar City, Utah, March 8, 2023 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News Firefighters and other workers at the scene where a dump truck driver safely offloaded a pile of burning trash into a church parking lot in Cedar City, Utah, March 8, 2023 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News Firefighters and other workers at the scene where a dump truck driver safely offloaded a pile of burning trash into a church parking lot in Cedar City, Utah, March 8, 2023 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News
Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2023, all rights reserved.