A fire that broke out at the Alliance Landfill on Aug. 17 led to the evacuation of animals from the Alliance Animal Shelter and the closure of Kansas Street as the Alliance Volunteer Fire Department battled the blaze.
AVFD Chief Troy Shoemaker explained that they received the call just after 4 p.m. on Aug. 17.
“The entire tree dump was on fire,” said Shoemaker. “It involves a fairly significant footprint. The fire was caused by a tub grinder, which is a piece of machinery that they use to grind up branches and stuff to make mulch.”
The wind played a role in the fire spreading across Kansas Street as it blew embers into the grass.
“The fire jumped Kansas, and was burning grass north of Kansas,” Shoemaker said. “There was a house and some other structures to the north it could have potentially threatened at that point.”
Shoemaker explained crews cut fire lines using equipment from the landfill and the street department on the south side of Kansas Street. Another fire line was made north of Kansas Street using a disc. Shoemaker said once the fire was prevented from spreading, they made the decision to allow the fire to burn out.
“It was too hot to put people and equipment in there to extinguish that,” said Shoemaker. “The BTUs of the fire were too hot to even put water on it at some points. We did cut some trees down on the north side of the landfill to stop forward progression of the fire. We allowed the pile to burn itself out.”
Shoemaker said hot spots were still present as of Monday morning. He explained they monitored the fire into Wednesday morning, and that the landfill staff started moving the piles later in the week to help the heat dissipate.
“We’re on the tail end of it now, but there are still some little hot spots left,” Shoemaker said.
The biggest challenge in battling the fire, Shoemaker noted, was the wind.
“Unfortunately, the wind was blowing into town,” said Shoemaker. “There was some wild-land fire smoke blowing into the area, and then we had the landfill fire adding to that. The best thing for us to do was to allow it to burn itself out. The fire’s been contained to Tuesday evening, just to those piles, so the forward progression was stopped.”
Shoemaker explained that the rain helped expedite the process of the fire burning itself out, though, more rain would have been needed to make a large impact.