A garbage truck caught fire and then exploded near Sorrento Springs Elementary School in St. Louis County before 1 p.m. Thursday, sending flames shooting into the air just off school property before the driver managed to steer the burning vehicle away from the building. No injuries were reported, and no homes or other structures were damaged, according to fire officials.
The driver first realized the Republic Services truck was on fire while it was still on school property, according to fire officials cited by KMOV. Rather than let the fire burn near the school, the driver moved the truck a couple of hundred yards away from the building — a maneuver that lines up with standard waste industry protocol calling for drivers to relocate a smoldering load onto open ground so crews can extinguish it without risking damage to structures or the truck itself, as Hoodline has previously reported.
The truck went up in flames shortly after being moved, per fire officials, and a natural gas explosion sent heavy flames shooting outward during the incident. Authorities say vapor mixed with natural gas ignited during the initial fire, a chain of events consistent with how compressed natural gas fuel systems are engineered to behave under extreme heat. The blast destroyed a tree instantly, according to authorities, though homes in the area were not damaged and no people were injured.
Why CNG Trucks Carry Extra Risk
Republic Services has run compressed natural gas collection trucks across St. Louis County municipalities, including Ballwin and Manchester, since a $25 million fleet upgrade beginning in 2012, according to Town And Country Patch. That investment grew to more than 100 CNG vehicles operating in the region by 2016, per Heavy Duty Trucking, which also notes Republic Services employs over 600 workers serving roughly 300,000 residential customers across St. Louis, St. Charles, and Jefferson counties.
Those trucks carry Type 4 composite fuel cylinders pressurized up to 3,600 psi, according to Fire Engineering. The tanks are built with thermal pressure relief devices that open and vent gas once temperatures reach roughly 206 degrees Fahrenheit, acting as a non-reclosing safety fuse meant to keep the tank from rupturing outright.
A Tricky Call For Firefighters
Fire service guidance from the National Fire Protection Association and FDNY specifically warns firefighters against spraying water directly onto exposed CNG cylinders during a vehicle fire, since cooling those pressure relief valves can stop gas from venting properly and instead trigger a catastrophic high-pressure explosion, according to Firefighter Close Calls. It remains unclear whether Thursday's explosion in Ballwin was the result of an uncontrolled tank rupture or the activation of those thermal relief devices working as designed.
The hazard is not hypothetical. In December 2024, a burning CNG-powered garbage truck in Arlington Heights, Illinois, suffered a natural gas cylinder explosion during the emergency response, injuring two police officers and a firefighter and damaging nearby homes, according to Cardinal News. What sparked the fire inside the Ballwin truck's hopper before the explosion has not been disclosed.
A Recurring Hazard In Waste Collection
Garbage truck fires are far from rare. A 2024 report from the National Waste & Recycling Association and Resource Recycling Systems found approximately 5,000 fires occur annually across U.S. waste streams, reflecting the elevated risk environment facing collection trucks and processing facilities, per Urban E Recycling. Environmental Protection Agency research points to improperly discarded lithium-ion batteries as a primary catalyst, since mechanical crushing inside a compactor can rupture battery cells and trigger thermal runaway that ignites surrounding paper and cardboard.
Hoodline reported just two days earlier on a similar case out west, where a discarded battery sparked a hopper fire in a Republic Services truck in Citrus Heights and the driver executed the same load-discharge protocol seen in Ballwin. Sanitation crews face this kind of risk as part of the job: data from the Solid Waste Association of North America and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show refuse and recycling collection workers face the fifth highest occupational fatality rate in the country, exceeding the rates for police officers and firefighters.
Sorrento Springs Elementary, located at 390 Tumulty Drive in Ballwin and part of the Parkway C-2 School District, serves roughly 288 students in kindergarten through fifth grade. Video of the burning truck near the school was shared by Lincoln Turns, according to KMOV, capturing the fire before the explosion sent flames into the air. No injuries or property damage beyond the destroyed tree have been reported in connection with the incident.
