VIDEO: Dozens of firefighting crews in Northern Colorado used lessons learned more than three decades ago, in 1987, to extinguish a large tire fire. “Tire mountain,” as the locals call it, is a recycling company east of Platteville with more than eight million used tires spread across 64 mounds, or “cells.”
Seven of them caught on fire on Wednesday, with the cause still not officially determined. The plume from the fire could be seen as far away as Denver, but was completely extinguished within 24 hours.
Firefighters say the same property went up in flames 33 years ago, and that time it took nearly a week to extinguish. The fire chief in the area in 1987 was Gary Homyak, who now serves as the fire department’s board president.
“It was the same black smoke we had seen 33 years ago,” Homyal told CBS4’s Dillon Thomas. “I was fire chief at that time. That was our first experience with tire mountain.”