City and Cypress County fire crews respond to a fire at Medicine Hat Landfill, two days in a row over the Easter weekend.--NEWS PHOTO GILLIAN SLADE
gslade@medicinehatnews.com@MHNGillianSlade
Several fire engines and two departments responded to a fire at the Medicine Hat landfill site beyond Veinerville over the long weekend.
“It was a hot compost pile that was smouldering and so our crews along with Cypress County crews took the pile apart with the high-hoe unit and wet it all down and extinguished it,” said Brain Stauth, fire chief with the Medicine Hat Fire Department.
The initial response to the fire was early afternoon on Sunday, when it was particularly windy.
Stauth says crews were on site for about two hours. There were no flames but plenty of steam and smoke indicating there was a hot area inside the pile.
Crews then had to return again on Monday and spent about six hours there, he said.
It’s important to note that this fire was not in the landfill, said Stauth. It was simply a compost fire where they had piled compost branches, leaves and grass clippings on top of the ground in a separate pile not near anything else.
Stauth says this fire was not in the landfill itself.
In November 2013 a landfill fire began in the Westar Landfill in the region near the junction of Highways 41 and 41A, eight kilometres east of Medicine Hat. That fire raged on for months with special crews brought in to address it. Cypress County declared a local state of emergency with some residents in the area given notice to evacuate due to concerns about air quality.
At the time Cypress County fire chief explained that the Westar Landfill fire was in the landfill itself that had accumulated 10 or 12 years of construction material including asphalt shingles, aluminum siding, insulation etc.,
At the fire this weekend at the Medicine Hat landfill location, Stauth says, the fire was self-combusting because of the heat generated by the content of the “compost” pile.
Fire crews ended up tearing apart the pile of compost and then soaked the area with water and foam to extinguish the hot areas, said Stauth.
He said landfill staff on site would be monitoring the situation on Tuesday to determine if anything further was required.
“They’ll let us know if there’s anything else that they need,” said Stauth.
In the case of Westar Landfill fire it was not until Dec. 31, 2013 that the fire was declared to be officially extinguished.
