This weekend’s fire in a scrap metal pile at the Mission Flats landfill has an environmental expert wondering if potentially toxic goods could be disposed of in a better way.

The fire sent plumes of black smoke into the air causing the city to smell like an electrical fire. People were also being told to stay indoors as the smoke could be toxic if they were exposed to it for too long.

Professor of Environmental Studies at Thompson Rivers University, Michael Mehta, says many other countries are better at preventing such fires because they look at the big picture.

“One of the things some countries are doing for instance, like Germany, is they’re moving towards better cradle to grave management of appliances, electronics and things like that do they don’t end up in landfills to the same extent, so it’s proactive,” he said, on the NL Morning News.

“What they do is, the manufacturer has to accept a return, for example, on an old television set and refurbish it or take that material and reuse it. So I think that’s a better approach.”

Mehta says one solution is for people to move our attitude away from a ‘disposable’ society.

“I think it’s also useful for us to really push for something called a ‘right to repair movement,” he added.

“A lot of people end up throwing away appliances simply because it’s cheaper to buy a new one than it is to replace a relatively simple part in them. That’s ridiculous, that’s got to change. So, I think as we shift our economy in the way we think about these products, we can scale down the size and the risks associated with these kinds of dumps.”

Asked if things these days are designed to be disposable, Mehta said they are, which he notes is part of the problem.

“Sometime economists call that planned obsolescence so that you can get into a cycle of buying things over and over again but it’s really not necessary,” Metha added. “A lot of these products can have modular kind of approaches to constructing them to make them very easy to repair.”

Cause of Fire May Never Be Known: KFR

A Kamloops Fire Investigator says we may never know what caused a potentially toxic dump fire at the Mission Flats landfill this past Saturday.

Ray Webster says it took about 24 hours to fully extinguish the fire that began in a scrap metal around 9 a.m.

“The pile of metal was far too large and it was maneuvered around a lot to get access to and to put out the fire. So we’re not sure even exactly where it started or what the cause was,” he said. “They are not really 100 per cent sure what was in there. So we’re not sure what caused it. It could have been gas left over in a lawnmower or I don’t know somebody put propane tanks in there.”

Webster says its why he is urging people to ensure they properly dispose of things at the landfill.

“We’re asking that people only dump metal in the metal bins and that any dangerous goods be supposedly given to the employees there.”

He estimated the size of the pile to be around 1,200 to 1,300 square feet. As for what will happen to things that did not burn, Webster says it will likely be put to scrap and recycled, as it was all metal.

The fire burned for hours, partly because firefighters had to truck water in and Mehta says officials in Kamloops may need to rethink emergency planning and put more funding into it.

(Photo: Kamloops Fire and Rescue)

– With files from Victor Kaisar