A fire Friday morning at the Hatch Hill landfill in Augusta burned a couple of acres of trash and produced an acrid smoke that was detected as far away as Richmond.
Deputy Chief David Groder, of the Augusta Fire Department, said nobody was hurt in the fire and there was no damage to equipment.
“It was just a surface fire at the landfill,” Groder said. He estimated the fire burned 1 to 2 acres before firefighters doused the flames.
The fire was first reported around 6:15 a.m. A caller reported smoke on Route 105 near the landfill. Moments later there were additional calls about a large cloud of smoke near the offices of Uncle Henry’s on Eastern Avenue. Groder said firefighters sent to investigate the reports discovered the fire at Hatch Hill.
Firefighters spent about three hours putting out the fire using water and equipment to bury the trash. A tanker truck from Chelsea was called in to help provide a steady water supply.
Groder said he was unsure how long the fire burned before it was reported, but there was as least one report of smoke in the air in Richmond, about 20 miles away.
Gardiner Fire Chief Al Nelson said his station responded to a smoke complaint at 4:30 a.m. on Enterprise Drive in that town. Nelson said firefighters determined the smoke had come from the Hatch Hill fire.
Craig Crosby — 621-5642
Twitter: @CraigCrosby4
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