Fire out at Republic Sanitation Services in Port Wentworth

PORT WENTWORTH, Ga. (WTOC) - Multiple fire crews responded to a trash fire at the Republic Services Landfill off Augusta Road.

Port Wentworth Fire Chief Lance Moore says it wasn’t the scale of the fire itself that made things so difficult - it was the amount of trash involved and the availability of water.

Crews from Port Wentworth Fire were called to the landfill around 10 p.m. on Friday night and when they showed up, they found tons of trash and the building that was housing it, on fire.

Multiple fire departments were called in to help, including from Effingham County, Pooler, and Garden City.

Even with all the help it wasn’t until 2 p.m. on Saturday that the flames were under control. The chief said the was out at 8 p.m. on Saturday.

”It took a while to get water supply established - it’s tanker shuttles,’ Port Wentworth Chief Lance Moore said.

Meaning that tankers were forced to leave the landfill, fill up with water at a fire hydrant, then drive back to the landfill to use the water, all because there was no water source on site.

When the fire was finally out, crews continued leaving to get water, moving instead to snuff out hotspots in the tons of burned trash.

“It’s just a tedious process. Most of the garbage, is what it is, there was a fire throughout the building, and really the only way to deal with it is to get machinery, take it out one bucket at a time, put water on it one bucket at a time, and keep going from there,” Moore said.

The process took hours but was familiar to the crews doing it.

Moore says that just last month, they were called out to fight a fire in the exact same spot.

”That was a little smaller scale because there was less product in the building, but it was the same situation, same scenario, and we did the same exact operations to get it under control.”

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

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