BOURNE — Firefighters battled a blaze all night at the Integrated Solid Waste Management Building, and the work is expected to continue through the morning, according to Deputy Fire Chief Joe Carrara.
The automatic alarm at the metal building that stores household demolition materials, such as wood, mattresses and Sheetrock to be transferred off Cape, first sounded around 5 p.m. Wednesday and the immense pile of trash has been burning and smoking ever since.
Although the 200-foot long by 125-foot wide metal building has sprinklers, the volume of fire overwhelmed the sprinkler system, Carrara said.
The fire started in the part of the building most difficult to access, in the rear right hand side, he said. Firefighters had to remove large parts of the metal wall to get to the burning trash.
This morning, transfer station employees and firefighters are using front end loaders to break apart the 30-foot tall pile of trash in order to douse the smoking debris in small batches. Carrara said he expects that process to go on until noon.
"It's very labor intensive," he said.
About 70 firefighters from several towns as well as Bourne have rotated in to fight the blaze. They need to be switched out frequently to avoid heat exhaustion, Carrara said.
One Bourne firefighter went to Falmouth Hospital for an evaluation due to a fall.
Fighting the blaze had to stop at certain times because of toxic gasses such as cyanide in the air.
The state Hazardous Materials Team, the Red Cross and mutual aid from Sandwich, Falmouth, Joint Base Cape Cod, Mashpee, Wareham, and Onset are assisting, Carrara said.
A similar fire at the same location kept firefighters working for about eight hours back in March of 2014, he said.
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