A fire flamed to life in the mulch piles at Tajiguas Landfill around 7 p.m. on a windy Thursday evening. Automated weather stations at nearby Refugio Canyon clocked the winds as hitting 48 mph last night. To contain the fire, heavy equipment at the dump spread the piles of mulch and recyclables out while firefighters from the county and the Forest Service poured water on it. The new Firehawk helicopter was also called out to drop 1,000 pounds of water on the fire at a time.
Heavy smoke made visibility difficult on the freeway, and Highway Patrol vehicles were taking groups of cars through the area yesterday evening.
The firefighters stayed on scene all night to contain the roughly half-acre mulch fire, which had spread to about an acre and a half of nearby vegetation by 10 p.m.. The incident was not listed as active on Friday morning.
Tajiguas has endured two fires since opening in July 2021, the other being the nearly 17,000-acre Alisal Fire in October. The facility receives south Santa Barbara County’s trash and also its green waste, which is chopped and piled. Tajiguas also installed a state-of-the art anaerobic digester that produces methane used to power the plant and also organic matter that is mixed with the green waste to form compost.
This story will be updated as information becomes available.
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