Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 20, 1994 TAG: 9410200089
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: VIRGINIA EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MONTVALE LENGTH: Medium
It seeped into air vents and under door jams.
It got in people's noses and eyes, making them sneeze and wheeze.
It covered homes and lawns with soot.
It crept over to Dalton's home, a mile away, and beyond.
For 38 days, the "fluff fire" at Shredded Products Corp. burned, forcing the residents of this Bedford County community to change their daily routines. They stayed inside, didn't mow their lawns, kept their windows shut and took their clothes to a laundry rather instead of hanging them out to dry. Some even left their homes and stayed with relatives.
People complained of headaches, nausea, dizziness and some, like Dalton, had trouble breathing.
The fire finally was put out, the smoke cleared, and little by little, so has the community's fear and discomfort.
"I'm sure I thought people had forgotten all about that," Dalton said with a laugh this week when reminded of the five-year anniversary of the fire. "I'm sure I had. They don't say anything about it anymore."
No one here has marked their calendars to commemorate the day. No one wears a T-shirt saying "I survived the Montvale fluff fire."
The only time, it seems, that people pause to think back about those 38 days in 1989 is when reporters ask about it.
"Oh my gosh," said Charlie Bailey who owns the Minit Saver Food Market on U.S. 460. "Oh, it was terrible. Gosh, it stunk."
The stench came from burning engine hoses, cotton and vinyl car seats, dashboards and other parts left over from recycling automobiles for valuable scrap metal. Shredded Products sends the metal to its parent company, Roanoke Electric Steel, in Roanoke.
For years, Shredded Products had buried the fluff, and then began to stockpile it above ground. The company had applied for a permit from the state, but at the time of the fire, the dump was in violation of state environmental law.
The fire apparently started by spontaneous combustion.
However it started, it wouldn't stop.
Firefighters and emergency response crews swarmed over the area for weeks. They tried to blow it out with huge fans, drown it with water, suffocate it with dirt and kill it with chemicals. Each solution seemed to create yet another problem, and the fire continued to burn.
State regulators and environmental consultants hired by the company found heavy metals such as lead, zinc and copper in the smoke and ash, but not at levels to cause an evacuation. The state Health Department assured residents the fire presented no immediate health risks.
It's the long-term effects that some people still worry about.
"I can't say that that won't bother me 10 years from now," said Fred Westfield, who lives on a hill with a view of the scrap yard a couple hundred yards away.
Westfield, 67, said he's more sensitive to smoke than most people - can't even stand cigarette fumes in a car. During the fire, he suffered periodic headaches and rarely went outside to putter around his yard. The smoke so infiltrated his home he moved temporarily into the basement.
But the media crews that flocked to his property to view the fire were almost as bothersome as the smoke, he said.
These days, he doesn't dwell on those events of five years ago. Aside from the fire, Shredded Products hasn't been a bad neighbor - except for noises at night sometimes, and the occasional "BOOM" that thunders up the hillside. He thinks gas tanks sometimes slip through and wind up in the shredder, where they explode.
He hasn't had any lingering health effects from the fire, he said. But it's not the smoke he breathed in 1989 that he's concerned about. Westfield is concerned that the buried fluff might someday contaminate the ground water.
"What you're talking about is minor. It's what's buried beneath." Westfield thinks that fluff buried in the landfill - two or three houses deep, he said - could contaminate the ground water.
"It would be more in violation to the whole community if it got into the water," he said.
Westfield has had his well tested and found nothing. He's not even sure his water source is connected to ground water underneath the scrap yard - but he doesn't know that it isn't, either.
Ethel Dalton confessed that she's a tad worried about future effects from the fire. When it became clear it wasn't an ordinary fire, her children tried to persuade her to move temporarily, but she didn't want to leave her house vulnerable to vandals and thieves.
So, she suffered through, keeping her car and house windows shut tight. "It was like there was no air out there or something. You could smell it like rags.
"People were talking about how in 20 years you'd see frogs coming down the highway with two heads," she said, laughing.
She hasn't seen any mutated amphibians. "But it was real scary," she said. "You just don't know. The breathing part of it ... "
by CNB