Lynbrook firefighters respond to Valley Stream blaze

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Lynbrook Fire Department firefighters responded to a fire in Valley Stream on July 20.
Eastbound traffic was closed for hours from Rockaway Avenue to Satterie Avenue after a Gershow Recycling tractor trailer carrying crushed cars went ablaze in the left lane on Sunrise Highway. The fire burned on the crushed cars at the front and bottom of the trailer.
Valley Stream firefighters responded to the scene at 9:30 a.m. and found the tractor trailer in the left eastbound lane with fire and smoke emitting from the top of the opened vehicle.  Valley Stream’s Engine 2 from nearby Brooklyn Avenue parked in the westbound lane and stretched hose lines, but was not able to get to the seat of the fire, which was inaccessible from the ground. Valley Stream Ladder 345 then poured water into the trailer from above, but the fire was in one of the vehicles on the bottom front of the trailer and difficult to extinguish.
Lynbrook’s Ladder 427 was called on as a mutual aid, as was the Malverne Fire Department, which sent an engine. The fire was extinguished and the trailer was then driven to Gershow’s recycling center two blocks away on Hawthorne Avenue.  There the crushed vehicles were removed from the trailer.  The vehicles were wet down once again by Malverne’s engine. 
Sunrise Highway wasn’t reopened until the early afternoon after the roadway was cleared of debris from the fire. At one point, Sunrise Highway traffic eastbound was backed up to Green Acres Mall.

 

Courtesy Lynbrook Fire Department; compiled by Mike Smollins