By Robert Wilson
Knoxville News-Sentinel (Tennessee)
SEVIERVILLE, Tenn. — Heavy machinery was used for much of Monday pouring dirt on spots in the Sevier County Solid Waste landfill, in an effort to smother a stubborn underground fire that has been burning since about Thanksgiving.
The smoke had been venting though a steep hillside at the demolition landfill on Rainbow Road near the Sevierville-Pigeon Forge boundary.
Tom Leonard, director of the landfill, said the fire was first noticed around the end of November, and his personnel have been pouring dirt on it periodically ever since.
The smoldering underground fire is probably being fueled by discarded building materials or possibly mattresses that were buried after being delivered to the facility, Leonard said.
Water is pretty much ineffective for such fire, he said, although soaking rains can help. Household garbage is not dumped at the demolition landfill.
The cause could be as simply as a private citizen dumping debris at the site and then tossing away a lighted cigarette, which caught the refuse on fire before it was covered.
“Throw a cigarette on a mattress,” Leonard said, “and you’ve got a fire.”
He said sometimes residents or visitors will dump used charcoal from a grill, unaware that the coals still have hot embers deep within. The same can happen with house fire debris, he said.
The fire is about 10 feet beneath a hillside that is about 300 feet long and 30 feet wide.
Such fires, he said, can also be caused by discarded chlorine swimming pool chemicals that come into contact with other substances, such as oils, which can cause them to ignite.
On another note, Leonard said he expects to reopen the landfill’s compost facility in the first quarter of 2009. The compost plant burned almost two years ago.
The new plant will have firefighting safeguards that the old one did not.
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