Tough Long Island biz owner saves truck by driving it away from wildfire — while it's in flames
A tough Long Island business owner drove one of his trucks — while it was on fire — to save it from the wildfires that raged through the Hamptons over the weekend.
Mark Cirillo, 64, battled to save AutoGate Systems Inc., his business of the last 20 years, as flames closed in on his shop in Westhampton Beach on Saturday and eventually burned down a shed he used to store wood and building materials, damaged projects for clients and melted part of a truck.
'When I was getting the vehicles out, the last one was on fire,' Cirillo told The Post on Sunday. 'It was hairy! The smoke was so thick that you couldn't see. It was so hot, it was burning my hands on the steering wheel.'
Chilling video footage of the fire taken by Cirillo captured bright orange and red flames fanning out behind a building belonging to his automatic-gate business.
In the clip, Cirillo can be heard crying out, 'My God! My whole place! F–k!' as the blaze and thick gray clouds of smoke spread behind his building.
Cirillo said the blaze was so hot and powerful, it 'burned my hat and blew it off my head.'
But Cirillo said he was lucky things weren't much worse.
'I was fortunate. I was able to move the vehicles out of the way,' he said. 'Just as quick as the fire came up, it blew over us and went across the street.
'Every fire department on Long Island was here. It was something to see,' he said.
Officials said at least 90 agencies, including fire departments and EMS units, responded to the four blazes that broke out Saturday around 1 p.m. in Center Moriches, East Moriches, Eastport and Westhampton.
'The Apache helicopters were dropping 500-gallon buckets of water right here,' Cirillo said.
'All I can say is, you know what prayer does,' Cirillo said, pointing to the building that remained standing after the fires. 'We were so lucky. I never saw so many brush trucks! There were 50 or 60 of them. You saw 10-wheelers full of guys coming up the Sunrise Highway.'
Cirillo said crews came from Islip Mount Sinai to 'save the buildings.'
On top of losing one building, Cirillo also had big plastic bins holding metal building materials that completely melted into liquid, and trucks that had been moved out of the building had blistered paint and melted light lens covers on them.
Additional large wooden gates Cirillo's company produced for a client were still smouldering Sunday morning.
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