Sanitation Fire Fighters

[raybrag]

Found out yesterday from a Facebook group that the NYC Sanitation Dept. once had its own fire fighters, something I had not known before.  According to Mike Martinelli, they had their own ambulance and fire engine at the Great Kills dump from the 60's through the 80's. The ambulance was (at least at one time) a mid to late 60's high-top Cadillac, and the fire engine was a relatively small International.  I know that dump fires are (or were) a relatively common thing back then, and it makes sense to me that if the sanitation people were properly trained, they could save some FDNY resources when there was a small fire that they could handle on their own.  Flip side, of course, is that they might be tempted to fall into the "we can handle this" trap when they couldn't, and make a bad situation worse.  Maybe there's someone in this group who can tell us more.




Photo courtesy Charles Miller

 

[811]

In the 1970s, maybe 1980s Brooklyn's Fountain Ave landfill also had a small Sanitation fire engine

 

[mack]

Dept. of Sanitation had 4 pumpers located at NYC landfills in the 1970s-1980s - Bronx, Brooklyn, SI and SI.