Friday, March 22, 2002

CHARLES LARDNER
Intelligencer Journal Staff

   A burning tractor-trailer shut down the Route 30 bypass for six hours Friday, snarling traffic around Lancaster city through the evening rush hour.

At 11:31 a.m., a truck hauling municipal waste --mostly packed cardboard --caught fire and pulled to the shoulder of westbound Route 30 at Route 272, said Capt. Shawn Ressel of Southern Manheim Township Fire Company.

Haz MAt 2-9 was dispatched for a initial concern of chemicals onboard the truck, and after EPA to assist with control of contaminated runoff from the firefighting efforts.

The New Jersey-licensed truck owned by Wilco Co. was transporting garbage from Philadelphia to a waste facility in York County, Ressel said, when the driver noticed the fire.

Ressel said the cause of the blaze likely will never be known and there probably won't be an investigation. There were no injuries. "It was right in the middle of all the packed trash, so it would be very difficult to ever determine how it started, but it definitely wasn't suspicious," he said.

Flames were coming out of the center of the tractor-trailer when firefighters arrived, and the fire quickly burned through one side of the tarp-covered load. However, the trash was so tightly packed the entire trailerload of trash had to be dumped onto Route 30 to get at what was burning.

A state Department of Transportation front-end loader broke up the big block of trash so firefighters could extinguish the flames. The PennDOT vehicle then left and two Manheim Township front-end loaders were called in to scoop up the mess and place it on another tractor-trailer that had been called to take the trash away.

A state Department of Environmental Protection official determined the water used to extinguish the flames was contaminated by the trash and therefore had to be vacuumed off the roadway, and a Kline's Septic and Excavating Co. truck was called in for that duty.

The Wilco Co. will be charged for the cost of the accident and its cleanup, Ressel said.

Ressel said as firefighters neared the blaze he knew more water would be needed than the tanker trucks that responded could carry.

"When we got there, there was a fair amount of smoke, so we began dropping lines for resupply because the nearest hydrant is so far away," Ressel said.

It took about 1,200 feet of line to reach the fire hydrant next to the Outback Steakhouse at Route 272 and North Pointe Boulevard, which firefighters tapped about halfway through the six-hour incident, he said. "That's what happens when you have to access the highway," Ressel said. "A dry hydrant system would have really helped us out --we asked the state to put them in during the Route 30 reconstruction, but they didn't do it."

However, Ressel said, a dry hydrant system is being installed on the eastern section of the Route 30 reconstruction project currently under way.

Eden, Neffsville, Lafayette, Upper Leacock, East Petersburg, Manheim Borough, West Earl and Witmer fire companies all assisted in putting out the fire and with traffic control. State and Manheim Township police as well as Manheim Township HAZMAT, ambulance and emergency management association also responded.

Westbound Route 30 was closed between its junctions with Routes 272 and 222 until 5:45 p.m.