Garbage fire damages new Whitman County transfer station

Aug. 07--A garbage fire sparked late last week at the Whitman County Transfer Station and Landfill damaged the facility's newest building so severely that it has been deemed unsafe to occupy.

Whitman County Director of Public Works Mark Storey said the fire was likely caused by smoldering garbage collected Thursday that was left to burn overnight.

Storey said the damaged structure is only three years old and housed the entirety of the site's garbage disposal services.

"That's where we dumped all the trucks and all the residents came in and dumped their garbage," Storey said.

Storey said temporarily, the county is packaging garbage in the old facility, although some of the old building's transfer facilities have been dismantled.

Storey said the old transfer station had been converted to process recyclables, but after the fire, the county was forced to co-house both garbage and recycling in the same building, which has cut the number of garbage drop-off sites for county residents in half.

He said the county has supplemented the station with staff and equipment from other sectors of public works to help lighten the load, but operations are still expected to slow waste processing considerably.

"We've gone from eight or nine slots to drop off garbage down to four and we have a slower throughput, so we're gonna going to have to work some more hours and not be able to attend some of the other functions out at the facility the way we'd like," Storey said. "We're not going to not take materials, it's just not going to be as efficient and it's going to cost us more money (and) more man hours."

Storey said he expects most of the cost of repairing the building will be covered by insurance. He said any additional cost would be covered by the facility's operational reserves -- which are derived from the fees the station collects from users.

After an engineer from Reliant Engineering of Pullman deemed the building unsafe Friday, Storey said he approached the Whitman County Commissioners Monday and requested they declare an emergency in regard to the compromised building, allowing his department to circumvent the lengthy bidding process involved in most large-scale projects.

"What this allows us to do is point at somebody say, 'We need you to go do this work,' just like private industry does," Storey said. "It doesn't suspend all the requirements -- like we still need licensed contractors, we still need insurance -- but it allows us to bypass some of the more onerous parts of the process."

The commissioners approved Storey's emergency declaration request.

Commissioner Dean Kinzer said the hope is for much of the repair work to be completed before the arrival of winter weather.

"It's the winds and snow load that stress a building the most," Kinzer said.

Storey said if all goes to plan, he is hopeful crews will be able to begin repair work in September with an aim of finishing by Oct. 1.

"That's my wish, I don't know if that's possible or not yet and I don't know the cost affiliated with that yet," Storey said. "It's often more expensive to fix something than to build it in the first place, so it could be several hundred thousand dollars to fix it."

Scott Jackson can be reached at (208) 883-4636, or by email to [email protected].

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