‘Who’s gonna pick that up?’: Council truck dumps rubbish on road after it catches fire

Thursday, 27 March 2025

A rubbish truck in Pakuranga caught fire mid-route, forcing the driver to dump its burning load onto the street. Witnesses reacted as smoke and flames engulfed the truck.

Video shows the moment the waste inside an Auckland Council truck caught fire, forcing the driver to dump the load of rubbish into the middle the street.

The footage, shared by a local resident, showed smoke coming from the truck before the driver unloaded the rubbish on to Pakuranga’s Elizabeth St around 2.50pm on Thursday.

“Oh, who’s gonna pick that up,” the resident is heard saying in the video.

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The incident took place in Pakuranga on Thursday.

The pile of rubbish is eventually engulfed in flames, with fire crews seen in the video working to extinguish the blaze.

Auckland Council’s general manager for waste solutions, Justine Haves, said the council was working to understand the details of the incident.

Due to the confined space inside a rubbish or recycling truck, often the only way of extinguishing a fire is to tip the load out onto the ground so that emergency services can put out the blaze, Haves said.

“Unfortunately if the fire occurs in a recycling truck, the load is most often sent to landfill because of fire and water damage,” she added.

The fire was put out on Thursday afternoon.

Fire and Emergency Northern Communication Centre shift manager Michael Anderson said they responded to a rubbish fire at 2.23pm.

“We responded with two fire trucks and eight firefighters. We left the scene at 4.22pm.”