World’s largest sawdust dump is on fire ‘and will burn for years’

25 July 2016 (Siberian Times) – The mountain of sawdust is the size of more than 800 Olympic swimming pools at a site in the Ust-Kutsky district of Irkutsk region. A council spokesman said: ‘It is now impossible to extinguish dump with such an amount of sawdust. ‘Obviously, it will keep burning for a few more years.’ It has remained aflame winter and summer for around three years – and is seen on the video below. Greenpeace say the sawdust dump is the largest of its kind in the world, and the campaign group has raised concerns over the smoke pollution from the site. Already there is more than two million cubic metres of waste dumped here, reported to be waste from the Trans-Siberian Forest Company. Every day 15 new trucks arrive, each carrying around 70 cubic metres of sawdust. The site of the endless fire is 10.4 hectares in size or 1.1 million square feet. [more]