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Trash Hauling Heroes

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By KLINT LOWRY

The Suncoast News

Published: October 11, 2008

HUDSON - Mike Bottass and Dan Morales don't wear capes and masks to work - more like reflective vests and safety goggles.

And no one would mistake their garbage truck for the Batmobile.

But on one recent morning, while Bottass and Morales were out on the job for Seaside Sanitation, they found themselves thrust into a situation in need of some swift-acting heroics, and the pair came through to save the day.

On the morning of Sept. 26, around sunrise, they were out on their route picking up trash in a neighborhood just south of State Road 52, about two miles east of Little Road.

Bottass was driving, and when he stopped at the intersection of Bruin Drive and Jacamar Drive, he noticed what appeared to be flames at the front of a mobile home.

"At first I thought it was in the bushes in front of the house," Bottass said.

But with a longer look, he realized the flames were in the front window, coming from inside the home.

He alerted Morales, who was riding on the back of the truck. Morales grabbed the fire extinguisher off the truck and ran to the house, while Bottass called 911.

"The window was cracked from the heat," Morales said. He broke it out the rest of the way and was able to keep the fire contained with the extinguisher until Pasco Fire Rescue arrived and took over.

"If it weren't for the Seaside guys doing what they did, my son and I might have lost everything," the homeowner, Curt Larsen, said.

Lucky for Larsen, it was trash day.

Seaside Sanitation's general manager, Joe Assalti, was proud of the way his workers handled the situation. It was an extreme example of an aspect of the trash collection business most people don't take into consideration, he said.

"We remind our employees, 'you are a neighborhood watch,'

" Assalti said. "The boys are out there early in the morning, they're an extra set of eyes. It's dark, it's quiet. They're on the streets; they're alert."

Safety is a topic of concern in the trash collection business, Assalti said. At the company's offices there are fliers and leaflets and reminders posted on bulletin boards in hallways and rooms throughout the building. The staff has monthly safety meetings that cover a variety of topics.

Every aspect of the job - from truck equipment maintenance, to the use of safety equipment, to basic procedures - is covered on a regular basis.

As it turned out, Bottass and Morales saved the house of someone in their line of work. Larsen is an employee of Waste Services of Florida. He works out of the Pasco County Recycling Center, where Seaside brings some of the trash it collects. Larsen worked on garbage trucks for 20 years.

According to Larsen, fire inspectors think it was dog hair that started the fire. For years, there had been a sofa in front of the living room window, and the family dogs liked to sleep there.

He said he was told the fire started because enough dog hair charged with static electricity got into a wall outlet.

"I never heard of anything like that," Larsen said. "You can bet I vacuumed out all my outlets after that."

It was a freak occurrence, and considering how fast a mobile home can go up, he said a tremendous stroke of luck Bottass and Morales came by when they did, trained to pay attention to their surroundings and equipped with their fire extinguisher.

As it was, some cushions and drapes burned, but it could have been much worse.

Larsen had never met either of his benefactors, and still hasn't, though he sent $50 so they could go out to dinner on him.

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