Fire Damages Waste Transfer Station

By Andrew Gorosko

After receiving a report of an explosion and fire at the town waste transfer station about 9:20 am Sunday, July 9, firefighters from three volunteer companies responded and found stored garbage ablaze within the tall steel building.

Deputy Fire Marshal Bill Halstead said it appears the fire started in the locked building due to spontaneous combustion, or due to someone carelessly having left a hot object in garbage which was then brought to the transfer station. The cause of the blaze is not suspicious, he said. The transfer station is adjacent to the town landfill on Ethan Allen Road.

A damage estimate on the fire was not available.

Mr Halstead said the report of the explosion might have stemmed from aerosol cans in the garbage exploding in the heat of the fire.

 After the town closed its landfill about five years ago, it began using the transfer station as a temporary storage facility for locally collected garbage, which is then shipped to a regional waste-to-energy plant for disposal.

Firefighters from Botsford, Sandy Hook, and Newtown Hook and Ladder responded to the fire.

On arriving, firefighters found the building locked, so they attempted to force open a large steel garage door to gain access.  Simultaneously, they worked to force open normally sized access doors. After gaining entry through a normally sized door, firemen opened the large door from inside and proceeded to fight the blaze, Mr Halstead said.

The transfer station had been closed for business since Saturday afternoon. The garbage fire likely was burning for some length of time before it was noticed by a passerby who reported the incident, Mr Halstead said.

The building was fully filled with smoke when firemen arrived, he said.

Firemen used water from a fire hydrant at the Georgia-Pacific Corporation about 2,300 feet away to fight the fire.

Botsford Fire Chief Steve Belair said about 30 firemen responded to the blaze. About one-third of the garbage in the building had caught fire, he said.

Firefighters used a bulldozer to pick apart the burning mass of garbage so they could extinguish it, he said. Firemen were at the scene until about noon.

Town Public Works Director Fred Hurley said the tall steel shed is built on town property. The Housatonic Resources Recovery Authority, a regional waste disposal agency to which the town belongs, owns the transfer station. Wheelabrator Environmental Systems operates the transfer station.

Wheelabrator personnel went to the shed Sunday to start cleaning up the mess, resulting in the facility reopening for business Monday morning, Mr Hurley said.

Steel I-beams which hold up the shed got hot in the fire, so Wheelabrator called in a structural engineer to determine whether the beams were weakened in the blaze, Mr Hurley said.

Building Official Thomas Paternoster said he expects to receive a report from the engineer soon.

Mr Halstead said the fire damaged a large concrete wall in the transfer station and some electrical equipment. There also will be some expense involved in cleaning up the mess left by the blaze, plus the expense of repairing the doors.