A fire at the Allen County Landfill this week may have been caused by lithium batteries, Public Works Director Mitch Garner said.
There’s no way to know exactly what caused the fire, Garner said, but he suspects it may have come from batteries in a discarded toy or cell phone.
Batteries are not supposed to be thrown away, but not everyone realizes that also applies to smaller, lithium batteries found in various devices. When the trash is compacted, those batteries can create a spark that smolders and then catches the other trash on fire.
Garner was called to the landfill fire a little after 11 p.m. Wednesday. It was not a big fire, he said, and a crew with the LaHarpe Volunteer Fire Department was able to extinguish the blaze in a couple of hours. Garner and crews remained on the scene until about 4 a.m. to make sure it was fully extinguished.
Garner said he planned to talk to county commissioners about the fire on Tuesday.
It’s the second fire at the landfill in recent months. Several area fire departments were called to fight a blaze on July 3, which Garner suspected may have been caused by stray fireworks.
Landfill fires are of special concern because of the amount of methane gas created as trash decomposes.
