| Hurricane Sandy kept Willingboro Firefighters busy from October 29th through 31th. The department handled over 130 incidents over this three day period, with 100 incidents occuring from the afternoon of the 29th until the early evening hours of the 30th. At the height of the storm the department had three engines, a utility vehicle, and Chief of Department Burnett responding to incidents.
Most of the incidents involved broken and arching power lines or power lines that were pulled down by falling trees. There were also several incidents that involved trees falling into homes, but in most cases only causing minor damage. With many power lines down and broken, power was out to most of the town, with some sections not receiving power until the following week.
The only significant incident was a shed that caught on fire due to down power lines at 11 Peachfield Lane. Engine 1613 was called to 14 Patriot Lane for down power lines and found a primary power line down and arching behind a shed at 11 Peachfield Lane. The arching wires caused several plastic trash cans and a lawn mower to catch on fire. Eventually the fire spread to a garden shed that was next to the wire.
Engine 1613's crew attempted to used a dry powder fire extinguisher to control the fire. Due to the high winds they weren't able to effectively extinguish the fire. Engine 1611's crew was on Peachfield Lane and used a 1 3/4" hoseline to extiguish the fire in the shed. Once the power fuse on the line tripped the wire stopped arching and the crew of Engine 1611 was able to fully extinguish the shed and trash can fires. Crews were on scene for 90 minutes.
No firefighter or civilian injuries were reported during the storm. Willingboro EMS also had additional crews on stand-by and only experienced a slight increase to their normal amount of incidents. |
