Brownwood News – The Brownwood Fire Department was called to Thomason Park at Avenue C and 12th Street in Brownwood between 1:00 and 1:30 pm Monday to extinguish a pile of burning trash.

A City of Brownwood sanitation truck was running its route when something in the garbage caught fire.  Crews had to dump the load of burning garbage in an open area of the city park.  Firemen quickly arrived to begin the process of putting out the flames.

“Those trash trucks run $250,000 to $300,000 each and that’s one of our newer ones.  That’s how you protect your truck.  You find a place that’s open and vacant and dump the load,” said Brownwood Fire Marshal Buddy Preston.

“We’ve already got a grappling truck here to help spread this out and pick it up when we get it all put out.  There should be a front end loader arriving any minute,” Preston said.  The trash that was dumped, once free of fire, will be placed into another truck and hauled away.  The truck that had to dump the burning load will be taken to the shop to see if there is any damage.