Responders working to contain long-burning fire at compost dump
Mar. 21—Firefighters and emergency responders continued to battle a blaze on Thursday that began several days earlier in southern Pulaski County.
According to Ferguson Fire Department Chief Tim Farrell, the fire broke out close to noon on Tuesday at the Pulaski County and City of Somerset Compost Dump Site located off of the Southeastern Ky. 914 bypass.
Farrell said that from what his agency was told, the incinerator was being used at the compost dump site and stray embers apparently caught some of the surrounding wood piles on fire.
"(On Tuesday), they just dumped a bunch of water on ... the edges to try to keep (the fire) out of the woodline, and then fire crews stuck with it throughout the night just to make sure it didn't jump the line," said Farrell. "There are houses on the other side of this mountain so we didn't want it to get up in the woodline.
"There are mounds and mounds of nothing but big tree trunks and limbs that had originally caught fire, and then it's gotten over into the mulch piles as well," he added.
As of mid-afternoon Thursday, the fire was still active at the compost site — on Wednesday, high winds allowed the blaze to worsen, noted Ferrell — but he added everything had been contained and that they were keeping piles that have caught fire wet to try and prevent them from getting worse.
Pulaski County Emergency Management Director Don Franklin said on Thursday that they were spreading out the fire load — the wood, mulch, etc. — and putting it in "wind rows," what what Franklin described as a sort of road between the rows of burning materials.
"What that will allow is more air to get to the smoldering material where it will burn out faster," he said. "It helps us (in that) if something does flare up, we're going to be fighting a lot smaller issue than a massive pile like we had."
Franklin expected the fire to continue "for a while," noting that because it's smoldering, "it burns slow, but it burns thorough." He noted that wet weather expected at week's end should help "knock a lot of it down" though it's possible the fire could continue for several more days.
He added, "When it smolders like this, the heat is deep, it's hot. It would take a few days of rain to really put this thing out."
Franklin said that a health warning was issued Wednesday for residents of that area who may have trouble breathing, advising them to stay indoors if the wind is blowing the smoke in their direction.
He added that the county has discussed keeping the compost dump closed to the public until the first of April to give plenty of time to get the situation under control.
"What we're trying to do is just maintain control of it, which we've got," said Franklin. "We're in good shape, but it's just a matter of continually keeping this stuff separated, keeping it piled up on itself where it can continue to smolder down."
Nobody was hurt as a result of the blaze, said Farrell.
Virtually every fire agency in the area responded to help as the result of a countywide page, said Farrell, and agencies like the Somerset-Pulaski County Rescue Squad and Somerset-Pulaski County Special Response Team also responded with assistance in areas like drone technology use to locate hot spots.
"Everybody in the county pretty much assisted somehow, some way," said Farrell.
