Fire starts at old city dump

Thursday, October 11, 2007

by Michael Nowotny

A front-end loader moves dirt onto a fire at the old city dump.

Spontaneous combustion in a pile of grass, weeds and brush ignited a small but troublesome fire at the old Mountain Home city dump on Wednesday morning.

The Mountain Home Fire Department, with the help of a bulldozer and two front-end loaders, buried the fire under layers of dirt in order to keep it from spreading any further. The bulldozer was needed because there are no fire hydrants anywhere near the site and it would be difficult to haul enough water to the site to put out the fire, officials said. While the fire was smothered, on Thursday, the fire department was called back out to the site because more piles started to catch on fire.

According to Assistant Fire Chief Bud Corbus, the fires should be fully buried soon but are expected to continue to smolder.

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Burying a fire? At the old dump? Why does that sound like more of a fire hazard than a good way to put out a fire?

-- Posted by smurph on Thu, Oct 11, 2007, at 10:23 PM
Smurph,

Read a little closer. There is no water close by and to truck it in would not make much sense. Unless you want to be one of the guys that does the trucking of water for hours and they tries to go to work the next day. Remember, our's is a volunteer department that does a wonderul job and is very underappreciated by some.

And yes, I know a thing or two about fighting fires. I spent many hours protecting structures where there was no water. I used the same procedures depicted in this article and those structures are still standing today with no damage from the fire.

-- Posted by Dirtball on Thu, Oct 11, 2007, at 10:32 PM

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