Volney, NY — Firefighters spent three hours battling a challenging fire Monday evening at Bristol Hill Landfill in Oswego County.
Smoke was visible at least seven or eight miles from the county landfill in Volney after a half-acre of trash there caught fire. People in the area saw the smoke and called 911 at 5:18 pm, dispatchers said.
Volney, Caughdenoy, Granby, Mexico, New Haven, Palermo, Novelis and Oswego city firefighters, Menter Ambulance and the Oswego County Fire Coordinator’s Office responded to the landfill, at 3125 state Route 3 in Volney. Phoenix stood by.
Shortly after they arrived, firefighters drove fire trucks up a 60-foot hill of garbage and carried hoses up the hill to the trucks to extinguish the half-acre of garbage that was on fire, Volney First Assistant Fire Chief Kevin Hayden said. But it wasn’t a simple task as there were obstacles, including lots of smoke and wind, uneven terrain, and lack of water supply, he said.
Hayden and Volney Deputy Chief Adam Howard said garbage is continuously put in a large pile and packed some 60 feet tall so it’s like an all-terrain hill. That made it challenging for firefighters to reach the flames, which shot up about five feet over a half-acre section of the gigantic pile, he said.
The closest water supply was a half-mile away on state Route 3 so firefighters set up a “tanker shuttle” to get water to the landfill. Tanker trucks from Palermo, New Haven, Caughdenoy, Mexico and Granby retrieved water from a hydrant at the Volney station, then drove down to the transfer station and landfill, then poured the water into a large portable pond at the base of the hill of garbage .
A fire engine was stationed at that portable pond and pumped the water up the hill, through the hose that reached the fire trucks that had climbed the hill, Howard said.
As they battled the fire, the “highly toxic smoke was so thick that you can’t see so we don’t send anyone into the smoke because we’ll never find them,” Howard said. “There’s no visibility and it’s very uneven footing. You can easily fall off the hill.”
At least a dozen firefighters tripped and fell while fighting the fire, but none were injured, Hayden and Howard said.
At one point during the fire, Ambulance Menter evaluated a Volney volunteer firefighter for possible heat exhaustion, Hayden said. The firefighter didn’t need to go to a hospital and is OK, he said.
Firefighters also used thermal imaging from Oswego city and Novelis fire departments’ drones to help fight the fire, Hayden said.
Eventually, they smothered the fire (with water) to a point where they could get heavy equipment, including excavators, bulldozers and payloaders in there to scoop and push around garbage to get to the fire, Hayden and Howard said. County landfill employees also helped churn the trash with heavy machinery to help extinguish the fire.
Firefighters do not know exactly what was burning and they likely will never know, Hayden and Howard said.
After they returned to their station, Volney firefighters said they were still cleaning the fire hoses to get rid of all the garbage they had just sat in during the fire.
“It’s all garbage,” Howard said. “It’s all wet and moldy… it’s that bad.”
This is the third fire at Bristol Hill Landfill in the last two years, the chiefs said.
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