Four fire trucks and 18 firefighters raced to the Sechelt landfill to put out a fire Saturday evening, June 19.
Sechelt fire Chief Bill Higgs said the fire started underground due to garbage decomposition.
"It was something that was disposed of that either had some heat left it in or it was spontaneously combusted," he said.
The source of the fire, he said, could be a range of things, including thrown-out briquettes, stove ashes, or compost containing vegetable oils.
"The heat that is built up is contained and eventually it reaches the ignition temperature of something that's around it and then that starts to burn," he said. " And it'll just sit there like a little Dutch oven until the stuff burns away and then the air gets drawn down through a hole and then away it goes."
The fire was reported at 7 p.m. Saturday night.
"When we showed up, the fire was about 100 feet by 100 feet on the surface, and then underneath the ground, we had [to have] it dug up and suppressed as well," he said. "So it's a significant fire. It's just that it's not someone's house; it's something else."
Higgs said it took firefighters one and a half hours to put the fire out, including having to shuttle water back and forth from the hydrant at Dusty Road and Sechelt Inlet Road, as there's no water source by the landfill. To fully extinguish the fire, firefighters dug underground, with water flowing, to battle its source.
"It has to be put out because if you don't put it out, it can travel underground and pop up all over the place and you get these underground fires that will just tax you and everyone else to the limit," he said.
Higgs said as with any fire scene, but even more so given the materials at the landfill, firefighters strived to limit the environmental impacts of the fire.
"There's nothing we can do about the smoke except put the fire out, but where we can limit our effect on the environment, is to use as little water as possible," he said, explaining that the concern is creating a run off of "leachate" - the water that has absorbs contaminants. "But at same time [we had to] be darn good and sure we've got the thing out because we don't want to go back to an even bigger fire the next day."
