Smoke could be seen coming from the city's Waste Management Facility Sunday afternoon from the nearby McKenzie Industrial Business Park. (Supplied)

By Sheldon Spackman

Under Investigation

Investigators looking into cause of fire at city landfill

May 31, 2021 | 11:39 AM

Investigators are looking into the cause of a fire at Red Deer’s Waste Management Facility on Sunday.

Curtis Schaefer, Assistant Deputy Chief with Red Deer Emergency Services, says crews received a 911 call of smoke in the area of the landfill around 3:30 p.m.

“Crews arrived on scene and went up to the rubble pile and found active fire and smoke happening in the pile,” says Schaefer. “All told, it was probably 100 feet by 100 feet.”

Schaefer admits the location of the fire was a bit of a challenge for crews to attack.

“Just the location of being up in a little bit rougher terrain was difficult access for our crews to get hose lines in, and just the depth of the pile of rubbage made it tough for our crews to get to the root of the fire,” he explains. “But we were able to have operators from the Waste Management Facility come with heavy equipment and help us better access the depth of the fire and allowed us to put the fire out.”

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Schaefer says fortunately, no one was hurt and the fire wasn’t near any buildings on site.

“There was nobody there as the landfill is closed on Sundays, so that made it safer in that regard,” he remarks. “We had three operators from the Waste Management Facility helping us out, and we had 16 City of Red Deer firefighters and two Red Deer County firefighters helping us with their water tanker.”

Schaefer says they’re unsure at this time as to what started the fire but notes, it is not considered suspicious.

“The landfill staff mentioned that they had a small, small fire a few days earlier but that was extinguished, so not sure if that’s related or not,” adds Schaefer. “It was controlled quite quickly by the crews and minimal impact to anybody else at this time.”

Schaefer says crews left the scene around 6:30 p.m.