{"id":94316,"date":"2026-07-23T01:15:51","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T04:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2026\/07\/23\/more-than-400-truckloads-of-sand-help-extinguish-rankin-inlet-dump-fire-after-10-day-battle\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T01:15:51","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T04:15:51","slug":"more-than-400-truckloads-of-sand-help-extinguish-rankin-inlet-dump-fire-after-10-day-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2026\/07\/23\/more-than-400-truckloads-of-sand-help-extinguish-rankin-inlet-dump-fire-after-10-day-battle\/","title":{"rendered":"More than 400 truckloads of sand help extinguish Rankin Inlet dump fire after 10-day battle"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>                                                                                                                            Published 9:40 am Monday, July 20, 2026                                                                                      By Jill Westerman Northern News Services                                                                                                                                                 It took 14 firefighters, hamlet public works crews, heavy equipment operators, more than 400 dump truck loads of sand from Inukshuk Construction, and assistance from Agnico Eagle Mines to bring the Rankin Inlet landfill fire under control after it burned for close to 10 days. While the surface fire has now been extinguished, Rankin Inlet Fire Chief Mark Wyatt said residents may continue to see wisps of smoke and occasionally smell smoke for weeks because of fires burning deep beneath the landfill. \u201cIt\u2019s technically out,\u201d Wyatt said. \u201cYou\u2019re still going to see smoke on occasion because this type of dump is filled with virtually everything. There\u2019s no recycling program here at all.\u201d The fire chief said the landfill has been built up over decades by compacting layers of waste, creating underground voids where fires can continue to smoulder. \u201cThe surface fire is out,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat\u2019s burning underneath is part of what\u2019s been burning underneath for probably the last several years.\u201d He said it\u2019s not unusual to see smoke rising from the landfill, even during the middle of winter. \u201cWe will see smoke even in the middle of winter coming up from the dump. Small wisps of smoke.\u201d Loads of help The effort to extinguish the fire required more than 400 dump truck loads of sand, which were spread across nearly the entire landfill to smother the flames by cutting off the oxygen supply, Wyatt said. The fire department also spent five days fighting the blaze with water, but the effort was hampered by the lack of a permanent water supply at the landfill. \u201cWe don\u2019t have any hydrants or anything like that,\u201d Wyatt said. \u201cIt\u2019s basically spraying water for two or three minutes and waiting for the water truck to come and fill it up again.\u201d Around the ninth day of the fire, Agnico Eagle Mines was brought in to help establish a continuous water supply by pumping ocean water through approximately one kilometre of six-inch pipe to the landfill. \u201cWe were able to maintain a continuous water supply for about a day and a half, and that really knocked it down significantly,\u201d Wyatt said. \u201cThat, combined with the hamlet spreading the sand, we have achieved what I would concur to be the fire\u2019s out. \u201cIf there\u2019s a little bit of smoke blowing, you\u2019re going to smell it even if you don\u2019t see it,\u201d he added. Wyatt estimated the landfill is between 50 and 70 feet deep, although it could be deeper because of decades of compacted waste. \u201cI would say that dump, packed over the years, is probably at least 50 to 70 feet (15 to 21 metres) deep,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s all very compressed, but things still do burn.\u201d He said that burying the landfill under several feet of sand helps prevent oxygen from reaching underground hot spots. Wyatt praised everyone involved in the fire response. \u201cI would thank the hard work of all of our firefighters that have shown up in the middle of the night,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a lot of work for not a lot of people.\u201d He also recognized the efforts of the hamlet\u2019s public works department. \u201cThey\u2019ve been tirelessly working on the dump,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of work went into this, and it\u2019s out now, and hopefully it stays out for a while.\u201d Unknown origin The cause of the fire remains under investigation and will likely be classified as suspicious because investigators have been unable to determine exactly how it started. Wyatt said landfill fires can ignite for a variety of reasons, including spontaneous combustion, sunlight refracting through glass, batteries or other combustible materials. He also acknowledged that, in some cases, fires are deliberately set. \u201cOftentimes, it\u2019s people that are bored and have nothing to do and figure, Let\u2019s throw a little bit of gas on it and start a fire,\u201d he said. He noted that Rankin Inlet has experienced at least one landfill fire almost every year during his nearly 11 years in the community. Wyatt said the fire department has strengthened its mutual aid relationship with Agnico Eagle Mines, which should allow crews to respond quicker if another major landfill fire occurs. \u201cBut when nothing is recycled, and there\u2019s so many things that go into your garbage that burns, there\u2019s really not much you can do about it,\u201d he said.             <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Published 9:40 am Monday, July 20, 2026 By Jill Westerman Northern News Services It took 14 firefighters, hamlet public works crews, heavy equipment operators, more than 400 dump truck loads of sand from Inukshuk Construction, and assistance from Agnico Eagle Mines to bring the Rankin Inlet landfill fire under control after it burned for close [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":241,"featured_media":94317,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,4954,1],"tags":[116,4953],"class_list":["post-94316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-indigenous","category-nunavut","category-uncategorized","tag-indigenous","tag-nunavut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/241"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}