HANOVER TOWNSHIP, Pa. — "It's like Groundhog Day."
The Hanover Township fire chief summed up how a lot of the people you see here were feeling this morning..
Not just the firefighters - called to the same scene for the same reason about a year and a half later.
But the employees at this facility too, GFL Environmental Recycling center on Breaker Road.
The place just got rebuilt a couple months ago after a fire in January of 2022.
"Every time I go by here, I look at it, wow they're back in business, that's nice," Chief Joe Temarantz said.
Until this morning - when recycling material caught fire once again.
"It could be anything. We went back last time and it was undetermined. I mean, you have a pile of recycling material, you know, pick one - mice with matches, or somebody doing something they shouldn't, or it could be a lithium ion battery in the recycling material. It could be anything," Chief Temarantz said.
Employees who showed up for their 4:30 shift say they're the first ones in for the morning, so nobody was inside when the fire broke out.
Once the heavy smoke cleared, excavators worked to push the charred garbage - some of it still burning - so fire crews could douse the piles with water.
Last time around, this process took two and a half days.
"We got a good jump on it this time. Last time, it was a lot more material within the building."
The state police fire marshal is looking into what happened here.
The Department of Environmental Protection conducted air quality monitoring at the scene and found very low levels of carbon monoxide and says no hazardous fumes were detected.
ORIGINAL STORY: A fire at a recycling center prompted a big response in Luzerne County. It is at the GFL Environmental Recycling Center on Breaker Road in Hanover Township.
The fire started around 3 AM and firefighters from across the county were called to the fire.
Hanover Township fire chief Joe Temarantz says there are "piles and piles of plastic and cardboard" so the fire can be "deeply embedded" in the materials.
There was a very similar fire at the center a little more than a year ago. The fire chief also says they just got done rebuilding. Last time it took two and a half days to get the fire out because it has to be dug through with heavy machinery.
No injuries were reported. No one was inside the facility at the time of the fire.
The state police fire marshal is looking for a cause. The cause of the last fire was undetermined, according to the fire chief.
"It could be anything," he says.
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