A trash mound that had been piling up for months at the entrance to Sunset Park in Brooklyn burst into flames on Tuesday afternoon after a lithium-ion battery buried inside exploded. The fire broke out around 1:13 p.m. at the park's 41st Street and 6th Avenue entrance, drawing firefighters who extinguished the blaze, and parks officials said no workers were injured.
The blaze started while Parks Department workers were in the middle of loading bags of trash from the dump into a garbage truck, according to Gothamist. A 911 call brought firefighters to the scene, and the Department of Environmental Protection later packed up the battery and handed it off to a recycling contractor for disposal, the outlet reported.
Neighbor Lucas Nieuwenhuis said he was not surprised that a large battery had ended up dumped there. He described the whole situation as a quagmire. An Instagram account dedicated to chronicling the pile aimed to document the trash mound at least three times a day. The account has captured rats scurrying around the pile, which has drawn rodents to the area and sometimes swallowed up half of the walking space on the pathway into the park, per the same account relayed by Gothamist.
A Mound That Grew for Months Before Igniting
The trash pile fluctuated in size over time as workers regularly cleared bags of debris, but it kept coming back, and it included discarded appliances alongside ordinary garbage. The ad-hoc dump had attracted illegal dumping and become something of a spectacle, drawing sightseers who regularly returned to photograph it, the report noted.
By Wednesday, the pile had been all but cleared, though it continued to emit a stench even after cleanup crews hauled it away. The Parks Department has ordered the bins needed to eliminate the trash pile for good and is developing another plan of action, according to the same Gothamist report.
A Citywide Battery Problem Reaches a Brooklyn Park
The Sunset Park fire is the latest example of a hazard that has been mounting across New York City for years. Fires caused by improperly disposed batteries have been a growing problem in the city's homes and garbage trucks, and the Sanitation Department has dealt with blazes in 141 garbage trucks so far this year, with battery fires responsible for 63 of them, per attribution to Vincent Gragnani in the Gothamist account.
That trend lines up with citywide figures reported elsewhere: FDNY fire marshals had investigated 282 lithium-ion battery fires through late August, putting the city on pace to surpass the 292 battery blazes recorded in all of 2025, according to BigNY.com. In July, FDNY First Deputy Commissioner Daniel Flynn and Chief Fire Marshal Michael Kavanagh reported a 70 percent surge in battery-related blazes for 2026 and urged New Yorkers to store lithium-ion batteries outdoors, as detailed by the Daily Dispatch.
The hazard has already shown up in city sanitation operations before. In April, Department of Sanitation collection workers in the Bronx were forced to dump a burning trash load onto DeKalb Avenue after a garbage-truck fire near 3425 DeKalb Avenue was caused by discarded lithium-ion batteries, according to the Norwood News — an incident Hoodline also reported after a similar truck fire in Downtown Brooklyn that same month.
Councilmember Points to Resource Gaps
City Councilmember Alexa Avilés, who represents the district that includes Sunset Park, said more sanitation resources and increased parks funding are needed to address the underlying problem, according to the Gothamist report. Under Department of Sanitation regulations, a vehicle owner or driver may face a fine of up to $18,000 and vehicle impoundment for illegally dumping waste on public property, per NYC.gov.
The city has also leaned on residents to help catch offenders. DSNY's Illegal Dumping Award Program pays members of the public up to 50 percent of collected fines, and videos showing legible license plates can help document illegal dumping, according to FOX 5 New York. Separately, city law bars residents from placing lithium-ion and rechargeable batteries in curbside trash or recycling at all, requiring use of one of DSNY's Special Waste Drop-Off Sites or a retail take-back program instead, per NYC.gov.
NYC Parks manages the 24.5-acre Sunset Park and its handball courts near the 41st Street entrance. The article also discusses e-bike and battery safety.
For now, the mound at Sunset Park's entrance has largely been cleared, but the lingering odor and the questions raised by neighbors like Nieuwenhuis remain. How long the site stays clean may depend on whether the new bins and cleanup plan the Parks Department is developing arrive before the next battery finds its way into the pile.
