A concrete pumper truck fire in Leongatha’s Anderson Street on Tuesday afternoon, opposite the town’s police station and near the statue of Lennie Gwyther and Ginger Mick, was quickly brought under control as the Leongatha, Ruby and Leongatha South Fire Brigades combined their efforts.
The truck driver was unharmed.
The Leongatha pumper and tanker, and the Ruby and Leongatha South tankers were all on scene.
Incident Controller, Lieutenant Phil McIlwaine of Leongatha Fire Brigade, outlined the fire situation crews faced.
“It was more in the back of the truck than the prime mover itself, so something on the back of the appliances malfunctioned and caused a fire,” he said.
“We responded as quickly as we could and the back part of it was well and truly going, so we had water on it within a minute of being on scene; we had one (member) in BA (Breathing Apparatus) who jumped straight in there and put her out, knocked all the flame down and knocked the heat out of it.
While it didn’t take long to get the flames out, checking with temperature detecting equipment and further cooling was required.
“We’ve just finished mopping up the last few hot spots on it; the brake drums and the metal all around the brakes were really hot so we made sure we knocked all the heat out of that so it didn’t restart,” Lieutenant McIlwaine said.
He was unsure of the extent of the damage to the truck.
A couple of tyres were incinerated and some of the concrete pumping section of the vehicle blackened.
While police had a presence at the scene, private traffic controllers from a nearby job didn’t hesitate to come and help by managing traffic with the aid of their signs.
“They just came and took over control of traffic for us and they did an awesome job,” Lieutenant McIlwaine said.
He noted that was a great help, also praising the efforts of firefighters.
“We’ve got members currently volunteering at Mirboo North, we’ve got operational members that have got businesses helping out at Mirboo North, so we’re pretty short staffed with what we’ve got today but we did an excellent job with our neighbouring brigades that chipped in to help as we expect,” Lieutenant McIlwaine said.
