{"id":66683,"date":"2019-08-27T14:06:13","date_gmt":"2019-08-27T20:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/entire-archuleta-county-landfill-is-on-fire\/"},"modified":"2019-08-27T20:06:13","modified_gmt":"2019-08-27T20:06:13","slug":"entire-archuleta-county-landfill-is-on-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/entire-archuleta-county-landfill-is-on-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Entire Archuleta County landfill is on fire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=0be6d77a-331d-4294-b628-f066ba8e1f1c&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" alt=\"A report came in Monday night that smoke was visible from the Archuleta County landfill, about 10 miles south of Pagosa Springs.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">A report came in Monday night that smoke was visible from the Archuleta County landfill, about 10 miles south of Pagosa Springs.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Courtesy of Archuleta County Sheriff\u2019s Office<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>The entire Archuleta County landfill was on fire Monday night.<\/p>\n<p>Christina Kraetsch, deputy director of emergency operations for the Archuleta County Sheriff\u2019s Office, said a report came in around 6:45 p.m. Monday that smoke was visible near the landfill, about 10 miles south of Pagosa Springs on Trujillo Road (County Road 500).<\/p>\n<p>First responders arrived on scene to find the entire dump site on fire, Kraetsch said. She estimated the fire to be about 2 acres in size.<\/p>\n<p>Firefighters spent the entire night trying to contain the blaze, an effort that was to continue Tuesday. Kraetsch said the public should stay away from the area, and personnel on scene trying to extinguish the fire are taking safety precautions, such as wearing face masks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not good,\u201d she said. \u201cDefinitely, the smoke and all the chemicals are not healthy to breathe in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kraetsch said the county landfill usually catches fire once a year. But this fire is the largest she has seen in the 10 years she has worked for the Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n<p>The cause of the fire is under investigation, but typically, Kraetsch said, chemicals or other materials people dump, sometimes even hot coals, can start a burn in the trash dump. In some instances, fires are burning beneath the layers of trash before eventually rising to the surface.<\/p>\n<p>Because of the size of the fire, and the amount of heat it was putting off, Kraetsch couldn\u2019t say when emergency responders expect to extinguish the trash fire.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, the landfill is closed. While the area isn\u2019t surrounded by too many homes, Kraetsch advised those who live near the dump to shut their windows or, if they are experiencing health issues, leave until the fire is put out.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere aren\u2019t too many people and houses directly next to it, but obviously, smoke travels,\u201d she said. \u201cSo the farther away the better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em class=\"mwc_shirttail\"><a href=\"mailto:jromeo@durangoherald.com\">jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>responders on scene Tuesday trying to extinguish blaze<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[493,350,28,310],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-66683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-archuleta-county","tag-fire","tag-headlines","tag-pagosa-springs"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66683"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=66683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}