An improperly disposed of battery likely sparked the fire that destroyed a large building at the Ukiah Transfer Station early this month, the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority reported.
So many bales of recyclables, some of them 10-feet-high, were still smoldering in the warehouse several hours after the large building caught fire around 4 a.m. July 2 that UVFA Battalion Chief Justin Buckingham said it would “probably be a few days before I can get inside to take a look,” explaining at the time that the warehouse was “filled with green waste and mixed recyclables (such as cardboard), which is why it is still burning.”
Once Buckingham was finally able to get into the building to try and determine how the fire started, he said “due to (crews) having to remove all of the materials to continue extinguishing the fire, the investigation was inconclusive.”
However, Buckingham said it was determined to have been “accidental, most likely caused by a lithium ion battery improperly disposed of that ended up in one of the bales of mixed recyclables.”
Michelle Goodman, outreach manager at C&S Waste Solutions, which owns and operates the Ukiah Transfer Station, said that batteries are one of the two main causes of fires both at their sorting facilities and on their trucks.
When asked what type of battery was the culprit, Goodman said that “by the time we actually see the battery, it is too charred to identify,” but she added that the lithium ion batteries that power computers, cell phones and other electronics are found all too frequently in both the recycling and garbage bins her company picks up outside people’s homes.
“We are finding a lot of e-cigarettes, as well,” said Goodman, explaining that the problem with the discarded batteries comes when they are crushed, often inside the trucks that empty people’s bins. In fact, Goodman said lithium ion batteries were responsible for a fire on a garbage truck in Fort Bragg last month.
“The batteries become a hazard once they get mechanically damaged, such as smashed by equipment at the dump, and such fires are becoming a problem nationally with more fires occurring at transfer stations all over,” said Buckingham, noting that “even a lot of the AA and AAA are Lithium ion batteries.”
To properly dispose of the batteries, Buckingham said “people can keep them separate and drop them off at all of the transfer stations in the county (Albion, Boonville, Caspar, Covelo, Gualala, Laytonville, Potter Valley, Ukiah, Willits, Westport), as well as the household hazardous waste facility on Taylor Drive.”
For more information, call the recycling hotline at 707-234-6400.
Lithium-Ion (LI) batteries pack a huge amount of energy into a small space. Crushing causes internal electrical shorts leading to thermal runaway and ultimately a fire. Since crushing is a necessary part of waste handling, LI batteries must somehow be excluded from the waste stream.
It’s obviously become a huge problem for C&S Waste Solutions. What mystifies me is why on my last visit to the Boonville transfer station I learned that they no longer accept batteries.