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Inco scare over for residents

BY HEIDI ULRICHSEN [email protected] Copper Cliff and Lively residents can breathe a little easier now that Inco and Greater Sudbury Fire Services have brought a fire under control at an Inco dump in the tailings area of Creighton Mine.
BY HEIDI ULRICHSEN

Copper Cliff and Lively residents can breathe a little easier now that Inco and Greater Sudbury Fire Services have brought a fire under control at an Inco dump in the tailings area of Creighton Mine.

Earlier this morning, residents of the two communities west of Sudbury were asked to stay indoors, close windows and turn off furnaces, air conditioners and other air intake mechanisms.

But Inco public affairs officer Cory McPhee says any danger to the public has now passed now that the fire is under control. The materials at the dump are mostly scrap wood, and the smoke coming from the fire is not any more toxic than that coming from a house or bush fire, he says.

McPhee says the Inco horns were not activated because there was no immediate danger to the public, but they sent out a media alert as precaution.

?The horns are there for a very immediate purpose. We don't want to be guilty of crying wolf. When we use them, there's an imminent potential threat. And there wasn't in this case. People in Copper Cliff and Lively are fine.We've driven through the communities. Still, we erred on the side of caution,? he says.

The dump is located a few kilometers into the Creighton Mine tailings. The fire was reported at about 4:30 this morning.

At one point, 14 firefighters with the Greater Sudbury Fire Service and tanker trucks operated by Inco contractors were on site flooding the fire with water. McPhee says a pipe containing tailings slurry will be diverted to bury the fire and extinguish it.

?It will both smother it and by virtue of it being liquid, it will extinguish it,? he says.

McPhee estimated that the fire would be fully put out in the early afternoon, as soon as the slurry could be diverted.

He says Inco and the fire department don't really know how the fire started, but suspect that it was caused by spontaneous combustion of smouldering materials from a smaller fire at the same site Monday.

Fire chief Donald Donaldson says the fire is not dangerous, but it is frustrating to fight because there is so much material.

?Because the stuff is all piled on each other, there's lots of void spots where the fire can still burn, and we may not necessarily get into those spots. So, it's a frustrating fire to fight. It's not physically demanding though,? he says.

Although the fire is in a remote location on Inco property, it was easy to access because there are good roads leading to it, says Donaldson.


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