The Morris County Recycle Center and Transfer Station avoided a serious incident after a lithium polymer battery caught fire in a trash truck Tuesday.
The facility says smoke was noted in a Superior Systems truck. Quick action on-site limited any spread until the Council Grove Fire Department arrived to finish the job. Several lithium polymer batteries from a remote-control toy vehicle were separated from about 10 yards of other trash before the fire was officially put out.
Lithium batteries can last for years, but damaged or unstable batteries — or improperly charged or stored batteries — can lead to explosive, rapidly-spreading fires that can be hard to extinguish. The Transfer Station says the fire could have cost over $1 million in facility repairs, hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment loss and the potential loss of life if the fire had been allowed to burn much longer.
The Transfer Station says all kinds of lithium batteries in Morris County need to be brought there or to the Recycle Center — not in the household trash — for proper disposal.
