Volunteer Cortez firefighter Mike Ptaszynski told the Journal that more than 50 firefighters and 20 fire vehicles from Cortez, Mancos, Dolores, Pleasant View, Lewis-Arriola and Towaoc were brought in to combat the flames Saturday afternoon, but retreated that evening because they were unable to make any progress.

"It’s an impossibility," Ptaszynski said. "On Saturday we had every tanker in the county shuttling water to put that fire out and we were losing ground. There is one big pile of garbage there that nobody in the whole state fire department could put out."

However, spraying or dumping water on a landfill is not advisable, the commissioners learned, because dirt layers separating stacked bales of trash every 16 feet could inadvertently dissolve. The resulting mud would drain down into the trash, threatening the structure’s stability and causing additional toxic-waste problems.

Commissioner Kent Lindsay, a member of the Cortez Volunteer Fire Department, said that 160,000 gallons of water were delivered onto the fire over the weekend from the ground and air, but to no avail.

"It is a surreal scene out there," Lindsay said. "The smoke is so thick that we kept crews pulled back.

"Anything you could imagine is burning out there, so health hazards are a big concern."

The Montezuma County Health Department has issued an air-quality alert because of the fire. Persons with respiratory problems are warned to avoid going outdoors. Heavy exertion in areas with thick smoke should also be avoided, said Lori Cooper, health-department director, especially with children.

"People should refrain from heavy exercises," Cooper said. "If you have asthma or respiratory ailments it would be better to stay inside if possible."

Landfill manager Deb Barton said Monday the landfill facility is approximately 320 acres and the cell that is on fire is six acres in size and contains municipal solid waste — household trash with everything from paper and plastic to propane bottles and paint cans.

Barton described the contents of the cell as being similar to items that might be found in a backyard burn barrel.

"It’s the exact same toxic level that people do out of burn barrels, but it’s just a thousandfold more because we took everybody’s burn barrel at once," she said.

Industrial waste that includes non-friable asbestos, sheet rock, lumber and paneling is buried in a separate location and is not threatened by the fire, she said.

"We keep track of our records and know exactly where we’re putting materials."

After realizing the fire could not be put out with water, officials next thought to bury it with dirt, but that could cause the five years’ worth of garbage at the landfill to burn for years, according to officials with the Denver landfill who are familiar with such situations.

The solution: Break it apart, bale by bale.

A track hoe is being sent in to pluck smoldering bales from the pile, and deliver them to fire crews standing by. Heavy equipment breaks each bale apart and then each is doused with water. Once the fire is out, the trash will be re-baled and restacked.

"We don’t want to bury it, so we’re going to dig it up, essentially," said County Administrator Tom Weaver.

The cause of the fire has not been determined, and probably never will be, the commissioners said.

They speculated that it could have been spontaneous combustion as a result of some flammable mix of chemicals, a lightning strike, or a discarded burn barrel that contained embers.

"Previous load-records were pulled and investigated, but a determination could not be made from that, so what happened isn’t clear," Lindsay said.

The fire is confined to the landfill and is not considered to be a threat to any structure or surrounding land.

"It will not spread outside of the dump," Ptaszynski said. "It is fully contained with dirt, earth and berms."

Officials predicted that, even with their efforts, the large fire has the possibility of burning for up to a month, or longer.

But Barton said she expects the fire to be extinguished by today and that it will have little to no effect on the daily intake at the landfill.

"We’ll continue to do what we always do — inspect (incoming) loads rigidly even though we’ve been complained to that we do it too hard already."

She denounced rumors that the fire was ever left unattended and that the fire department simply gave up and pulled out.

"We brought it to containment and then made the decision to begin smothering yesterday with the resources that we had available," she said.