VOORHEESVILLE — Anita Sperbeck and her grandchildren had fallen asleep in their first-floor living room while watching a movie Thursday night. “I was sound asleep, all of a sudden all I heard was boom!, I lept up and I see these flames,” Sperbeck said.

Anita and her husband, David, provided The Enterprise with footage taken after the explosion.

The Sperbeck home is bordered on two sides by the New York State Department of Transportation garage at 16 Maple Ave.

The Voorheesville Volunteer Fire Department arrived at the DOT garage at about 5 a.m. Friday to find three trucks on fire.

Chief William Reddy, said that prior preparation allowed the department to put out the fire as quickly and safely as possible.

This knowledge and preparation led to getting the fire under control in about 20 minutes, and completely extinguished within half-an-hour after that, he said.

Reddy says the department does prior walk-throughs to familiarize itself with an area should a fire happen. This allowed the department to know that there was fuel stored about 30 feet away from the three burning trucks. The stored fuel did not ignite.

Reddy said that 34 members of his department responded to the fire, none were hurt, and none needed to  be treated.  

Nancy Tate lives across the street from the garage. At first, she thought it might have been a trainwreck that roused her from sleep and sent her to the back window of her home, searching for what had just exploded. “Actually it rattled the windows,” she said, later adding, “I’ve never heard anything like it.”

She went to the front of her home, which faces the DOT garage, and saw flames shooting into the air. “It was violent,” she said.