Rumpke truck fire prompts warning from Reily Twp. fire chief

“He pulled over in a parking lot and there was smoke coming out of the bottom of the truck. We dumped it in the parking lot, put it out and Rumpke came and cleaned it up,” Conrad said. The fire was in the middle of the truck and had burned through an area about the size of a wheel barrel.

“It was something someone had put in the trash. We never did find the battery, but that it probably what it was or possibly ashes,” the chief said.

He added a reminder: Avoid putting lithium batteries or flammable material inside of your trash cans.

“Lithium batteries are really bad. They will explode once the get packed in,” Conrad said. “It could have been bad if the driver had not seen the smoke.”