The Wednesday-morning sky brought relief to residents of Montezuma County who had been inundated with smoke from a county-landfill fire that began Saturday afternoon.

Landfill manager Deb Barton announced that, as of 3 p.m. Tuesday, the fire was completely suppressed and for the first time in three days the looming haze subsided.

"We have the fire totally smothered at this point so that people won’t be breathing the burn-barrel-1,000-fold smoke," Barton said Wednesday. "Our next stage is we are checking where the hot spots are. Then we’ll be uncovering those little chunks and dousing them — so we’re actually putting the fire out little bits at a time."

The cause of the fire remains unknown and Barton speculated that it could have been anything from embers in a burn barrel to a piece of glass focusing heat in the sun.

More than 50 firefighters from around the county battled the blaze Saturday but retreated when officials decided the battle would better be fought with bulldozers and dirt.

The fire caught after business hours in a six-acre municipal cell containing household trash. It sent towering plumes of smoke into the air.

"When they say municipal cell, that means any old thing that comes out of people’s houses can go into a municipal cell, including hazardous materials like plastics and pesticides, because they are exempt from hazardous-waste regulations," said Jeannine Natterman with the Colorado Department of Health and Environment in Denver.

Monday morning a county-wide health alert was issued by the local health department warning area residents to avoid outside exercise and to limit smoke exposure by closing their doors and windows.

Local radio station KRTZ aired the alert Monday, a warning was printed in Tuesday’s edition of the Journal and television station KOBF out of Farmington, N.M., reported on the fire Tuesday evening.

On Wednesday, the alert was no longer in effect and there had been no reports of illness as a result of the landfill fire, said Lori Cooper of the county health department.

"There have been some general complaints, but there’s been nothing that doctors have reported to us about people going to the hospital or doctor because of the smoke," Cooper said.

However, some area residents were angered that the alert did not come earlier and that more timely efforts were not made to make sure the community was aware of the health dangers.

Deb Jensen of Cortez, who exercised outdoors over the weekend, said she was upset because she believed the smoke was coming from a wildfire and only learned Tuesday that it was emissions from a landfill blaze.

"Everybody assumed it was a forest fire and nobody had any idea there was toxic stuff burning. We just thought it was close to the landfill," she said.

"We have no local news until the paper comes out and if you don’t listen to the radio, you’re out of luck. It’s upsetting that I went out in it and didn’t know what it was and then there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it after the fact," Jensen said.

Cooper and Barton said the delayed alert was a result of the fire starting over the weekend when no one was available to take action on informing the public.

"Starting Monday morning, the health department and I were in constant contact with each other," Barton said. "As soon as they were brought on board, there was a constant flow of information between here and Grand Junction and Denver."

Natterman said county officials had made attempts to contact the state about the fire in the early-morning hours on Sunday, but again there was no one around to answer the phone.

The responsibility of informing the public, Natterman said, rests on the shoulders of the local health department. She said there are avenues for getting an alert out over the weekend if the risks are serious enough.

"If we have an imminent health problem, we get people out there on foot because there really is no medium that you’re going to catch everyone. There is always a way if people need to be alerted," Natterman said.

However, the levels of toxins emitted by the fire were not likely high enough to harm people, plants or animals because the hazardous materials were in minimal amounts, she said.

"To say specifically what’s going in the air — you name it, it’s probably going in the air, but we are talking small quantities here," Natterman advised.

"If people did common-sense avoidance of being in the smoke ... the smoke probably didn’t hurt anybody on an acute or short-term basis."

Barton said she regrets that the fire took place but that landfill fires are very common and her employees are generally prepared to respond to such emergencies.

"Fires are a natural hazard in the landfill business. We recognize that and there are plans in place. I wish it hadn’t happened but when it does, you work as hard and as fast and as safely as you can."

Very little will be changed at the county landfill as a result of the fire, although Barton said she is always open to suggestions.

"We’re still doing the inspections as we’ve always done. Because we are a bale facility, everything that goes onto the bale floor is 100-percent inspected, which exceeds statutory requirements."

Barton added that there are random load inspections and load-inspection forms people are asked to fill out when bringing in their trash.

"We hope now that people will be a little less grumpy about being inspected," she said.

"Materials do come in that we cannot take, so people take them back."

Throughout the fire, the landfill has remained open for business although some items considered "fuel" for the fire have been temporarily banned.

"We’re still asking that people hang on to fencing material. We can handle a limited amount of it but if they could hang on to it until at least next Monday, it would be helpful,’ Barton said. "We are taking household compost and construction debris the rest of this week. Saturday operations people can bring their things if need be."

Citizens can also help landfill employees avoid catastrophes like the fire in the future by following some simple suggestions.

• Be aware of what you throw away and the consequences of its disposal.

• Ask questions of your hauling service or call the landfill.

• Stir burn barrels with water and be sure there are no embers. Wait at least two weeks before taking them to the landfill.

• Be honest about what you are bringing into the dump. If a toxic material burns, the county’s residents get it back in the form of noxious smoke.