Yet another blaze broke out at the Lycoming County landfill in Brady Township.

Firefighters and the Lycoming County landfill employees told the Sun-Gazette they battled it for over two and a half hours from Thursday night through early Friday morning.

It was first discovered as a glow seen in the distance just after 11:15 p.m. Thursday that alerted the trash and recycling facility employees and volunteer firefighters to the blaze.

The call came into the county 911 center at 11:09 p.m. and the incident was closed at 2:38 a.m. Friday.

A cause was yet to be determined Friday morning when the Sun-Gazette reached Gary Staggert, deputy director of Lycoming County Resource Management Services, who said he was preparing an incident report.

Staggert, who said he lives nearby the landfill, said because of his job he is set up to get automatic text alerts for any emergency.

He said he received a call about a fire but without any detail, thinking it could easily be a false alarm.

He said by protocol he left his house to investigate and then could see the glow from a distance that was on the top of the active working face of the landfill.

Staggert said almost immediately upon his arrival at the landfill the volunteer fire companies were approaching from behind.

The fire had spread through an area where the trash pile is under tarps.

“We lost four tarps,” Staggert said of the burned coverings of the trash heaps.

He noted how, because there have been fires at the landfill, there is a plan in place in event there is a fire at the facility at any time of the day or night.

A bulldozer was manned and used to drag away the tarps and to excavate the piles so the volunteer fire companies which have the tankers, pumpers and aerial or ladder trucks, could put water down quickly.

He mentioned how two firefighters were on the bucket of the ladder truck and able to shoot water down onto the flames.

The fire almost claimed the landfill tarp machine, he said.

Although the cause of the fire is yet to be determined one of the employees said he noticed a white dust coming from the pile, which was indicative of potential pool chemicals such as chlorine.

“It is the time of the year,” Staggert said. “We don’t know but if I had to pick two things it was possibly pool chemicals, which tend to react to heat – not always immediately – or lithium batteries,” he said.

County Resources Management Services has information available for the public on what not to put into their trash that can lead to such fires, he said.

“We do our own education for the public on what should be disposed of,” he said.

Clinton Township Volunteer Fire Co. Chief Todd Winder also was reached about the landfill fire.

He, too, said the glow was noticed and said he was informed that a prison perimeter guard driving around the Allenwood Federal Penitentiary saw the glow from a distance and called it in.

Winder said he and an assistant chief were at UPMC Williamsport on an ambulance-related call when the call came in and he arrived in the ambulance.

There, they met with two or three of the landfill employees to respond to what he estimated to be a 300 feet by 300 feet area of the landfill burning.

One of the employees got into a water truck, another manned a bulldozer and the process of removing the tarps took place, dragging the tarps backward to be able to extinguish the blaze, he said.

Winder also said because of the report of white dust that he believed that it could have been caused by chlorine as some individuals do not properly rinse out the buckets of the chemical pool treatments before disposing them into their trash.

He said, in reference to Staggert’s statement of the firefighters on the bucket dousing the fire with the water, that there was a master stream of water on the fire using a deck gun.

He estimated that 2,500 gallons of water per minute were put onto the fire.

Trucks hauling water were able to draw from a hydrant and firefighters there did a type of loop back and forth from the hydrant to the landfill’s working face.

Winder said there is good coordination of the volunteer fire companies and the landfill employees to respond to extinguish these landfill fires.

“Fortunately, these fires are being called in early,” Winder said.

The 911 center indicated many volunteers were on the scene from units responding from DuBoistown, Hepburn Township, Hughesville, Montgomery, Muncy Area, Nippenose Valley, Nisbet, Picture Rocks, South Williamsport, Washington Township, in various capacities and equipment to support the landfill employees.

“We’ve got it almost down to a science,” hoping that they continue to be caught early before they become a deeper and broader fire that is much more difficult to extinguish.

With the coordination and the bigger trucks and more equipment these fires have not been “super manpower intensive” to extinguish, he said.

This fire may have been a result of the chemicals disposed of and there were two landfill fires in June 2023 that were suspected to be caused by lithium batteries.

The Resource Management Services site at 447 Alexander Drive offers numerous tips on the county website for consumers on what not to dispose of in their trash to help the officials prevent these fires.