By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Halloween night turned into more trick than treat for Barton County Landfill workers and Great Bend firefighters. Fire crews responded to a large trash fire just after 10 p.m. Monday night, working into Tuesday morning to control the blaze. Solid Waste Director Jennifer Hamby said it can be difficult to determine what causes a fire at the landfill.
"One of the biggest causes of landfill fires, though, are lithium batteries," she said. "If they're smashed or crushed, they're ignited. But it could be any kind of chemical reaction. Who knows what's in trash? If somebody would throw their old pool chemicals away, they could have a reaction. It's really just hard to tell."
A few hundred yards of trash were on fire. Two landfill personnel were called in overnight to operate machinery. Hamby was pleased to report no real damage occurred with the fire.
"Thank goodness, none of our equipment was damaged and nobody was hurt," she said. "This was pretty mild compared to some we've had out here."
Great Bend fire utilized portable water tanks to fight the blaze, and Hamby said the landfill fire truck was also used. In cases of trash fires, she said, the staff uses bulldozers and the compactor to move burning trash to the side and cover it with dirt once extinguished.
