BROOKINGS – An early morning fire at the Brookings Regional Landfill had both the Brookings Fire Department and landfill crew battling the blaze Monday.

“It was pretty sizable,” Fire Chief Darrell Hartmann said. “We do know where the fire started, and it just spread up the hill.”

The call came in at 3:52 a.m. Monday, Hartmann said.

The fire crew arrived at the scene and set up equipment to fight the fire.

“Fortunately, the landfill personnel started showing up,” Hartmann said, adding the two groups have fought fires at the landfill before. “They got their heavy equipment out, started moving stuff for us to contain the fire.”

Since fire needs oxygen to burn, the two groups worked together to starve the flames.

“Our crews were suppressing some of the fire. Our standard method is they push most of the burning material off the pile, then they come in with clay and basically cap it, so it smothers the fire,” Hartmann said.

“Their crew’s working hard and heavy along with us. It went, honestly, very well,” Hartmann said.

The fire may be out, but that spot can’t be used for a while.

“It’s probably done burning now, but it’ll be hot for a long period of time. They stated that that part of the pit may not be useable for a couple months because they have to leave that cap on it, in place,” Hartmann said.

“They do have another dump site already open, and before we left, there were people already dumping,” he added.

The cause of the fire may never be known.

“We were talking with the landfill people. Nobody’s been in that area, dumping for the last couple of days, so we’ll never know what started it,” Hartmann said. “Everything was locked up, nobody was in there; just one of those things that happens periodically.”

In fact, the fire department gets called to fires at the landfill “once every couple of years,” Hartmann said.

“Quite often when some of that stuff gets dumped, not everybody follows rules. It could be something that shouldn’t have been in there, could be materials that got together and compressed, they start heating up,” Hartmann said. “There’s a number of things that can happen to cause this.”

He advised people to be careful when throwing things out. Be sure all embers are out in something that was burning so they don’t re-ignite. Be cautious with batteries or disposing of chemicals like paint thinner.

“It can be anything like that,” he said.

There were about 35 firefighters and nine pieces of equipment on scene, “so we had a really good turnout,” Hartmann said.

No one was injured, he added.

The fire crews left the scene about 9:30 a.m., but they weren’t done yet.

“Then it took a couple hours cleaning up; we had to clean all the hoses, trucks, and everything to make sure everything was … ready to go again,” Hartmann said, adding they used a lot of hose and they had to be cleaned along with the trucks, all of which had been taken through the muddy, smelly refuse of the landfill. 

Equipment must be cleaned of all debris and dirt so it’s ready to go at a moment’s notice when the tones go off again, he said.

“Even though we’re still off-scene, there’s still work to be done,” he said.

Contact Jodelle Greiner at jgreiner@brookingsregister.com.