When Fires Happen at Landfills and How to Prevent Them
Intermountain Regional Landfill is a small, rural site off the beaten path in Fairfield, UT. So, when the tipping face caught fire in the middle of a weekend night, Brian Alba, the facility’s operations manager, learned about it from a sheriff who happened to be on patrol and saw the blaze. By the time Alba got there, it was out of control.
While the local fire department trains landfill workers, they have to put out fires themselves. It took Intermountain’s seven full-time staff, some of its haulers and employees from a neighboring landfill to do the job. They worked three eight-hour shifts, and the landfill shut down for four days—all over two lithium-ion batteries; Alba says these battery types cause 90% of the facility’s fires.
Once it was over, management retooled. They invested in a thermal camera monitoring system made by LiveView Technologies that sends alerts to mobile devices of elevated temperatures. They decreased the size of the tipping face. They bumped up efforts to ensure that the active face was well compacted and that they always had six inches of daily cover—not only to help prevent fires but to contain them should they happen.
“These three practices have been especially instrumental in mitigating fire. But if we were to have an event, we have additional measures in place. For instance, we can communicate with drivers via two-way radios as soon as they come through the gate, alerting them to stage away from the tipping face. Or if they are already on the working face, they are alerted to pull off fast. Then we would proceed to a real-time plan to put out the fire,” Alba says.
While landfill fires are not uncommon and require limited resources if tackled early, when they are left to burn, scenarios like the one at Intermountain three years ago can happen.
Subsurface fires in particular can wreak havoc, typically requiring firefighting tactics such as subsurface drilling and targeted application of various cooling agents. If they are not contained quickly, intense heat and high volumes of water can degrade the liner, posing risk to the surrounding environment, especially groundwater, says Ryan Fogelman, vice president of Strategic Partnerships, Fire Rover. The company makes a portable landfill monitor that, like LiveView’s, detects hot spots and sends alerts.
The sensor technology that Intermountain employs is one of its most powerful means to stay proactive, in Alba’s eyes.