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Trash fire lights up night at Flatwood
A fire in the dumpster at the Flatwood Refuse and Recycling Center drew three of the county's volunteer fire companies to the facility on Rock Mills Road late Sunday night.
Virginia State Trooper Brandon Johnson noticed the fire around 9:45 p.m. while putting fuel in his vehicle at the Virginia Department of Transportation's facility next to Flatwood.
Volunteer fire companies from Washington, Castleton and Sperryville responded to the scene to douse the flames.
Washington Fire Chief Ann Spieker said the fire companies quickly knocked down the flames, but the garbage under the surface continued to smolder. Community Trash, the company contracted to remove garbage from the dumpster each week, sent excavating equipment to mix up the trash and allow firefighters to spray the lower layers with foam.
Firefighters left Flatwood around 12:30 a.m., Spieker said.
County Administrator John McCarthy said the suspected cause of the fire is that someone threw ashes from a wood-burning stove into the dumpster, even though signs at the site say not to do that.
"The ashes just quietly smolder, then the container gets tossed in a dumpster, the lid falls off or a coal falls out and sits on a cardboard box smoldering," McCarthy said, hypothesizing about how the fire started.
Spieker said nothing was found at Flatwood to suggest foul play was involved. The fire did not spread to any other part of the facility.
The dumpster was nearly full on Sunday and the fire burned about half the container's volume, McCarthy said. Firefighters wore breathing apparatus to prevent them from inhaling any contaminants that may have been released from the garbage.
Little damage was done to the dumpster's structure, McCarthy said.
The heat of the fire caused the paint to flake off the dumpster's metal roof and it will need to be repainted. One of the steel beams on the roof also came unattached and fell into the dumpster.
The concrete container was scorched, but no cracks or damage were found during an inspection Monday.
McCarthy said Flatwood is back to normal and Rappahannock residents can continue bringing their trash and recyclables to the site as usual.
E-mail the reporter at kallen@timespapers.com.
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