MISSION, Texas (ValleyCentral) — A landfill in Mission caught fire Thursday evening near the Rio Grande Valley Humane Society.
Mission fire crews acted fast putting out the brush fire at the landfill on South Conway Avenue and Abelino Farias Street.
There were no injuries, damages to any building or animals.
This is the third time a landfill catches fire in the Mission area this year.
Operators of the RGV Humane Society are taking new steps to protect their animals.
The RGV Humane Society, housing pets up for adoption, is just next door – feet away from the landfill.
Its staff was on standby – in case the animals on its property were in danger.
“So our immediate action last night, once we arrived, was to turn on some of our industrial fans to blow air through the kennels to make sure there’s proper airflow and we were just monitoring the wind,” explained the Executive Director of Rio Grande Valley Humane Society Luis Quintanilla.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality told us that it is “aware of the incident and is coordinating with the City of Mission.
The Mission Fire Department says it is looking into why the landfill site has ignited many times.
“Our public works plant does have cameras moving on the camera footage to see if there’s anything kind of out of the ordinary suspicious, that kind of thing,” says Mission Fire Chief Adrian Garcia.
Mission’s fire teams have an idea about what could be causing the fires.
“It is our landfill area. So again, there is the possibility you know, in certain types of rubbish, you know, mix could have a some sort of reaction that caused heat and could ignite as well,“ Garcia said.
The fire department and Quintanilla are putting together a way to get these animals out, should there be another fire and it becomes a threat.
“I believe we will be meeting with the Chief, the fire department to come up with a plan with their guidance. And, we’re also working with a couple of national organizations to get some best practices in place to see how we could formulate a, basically an evacuation plan,” Quintanilla noted.
Quintanilla says one of his major concerns was smoke inhalation by the animals, though the wind was blowing the other way during the fire.
As far as damage to the building, Quintanilla let us know that the walls are made of metal.
ValleyCentral reached out to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offices in El Paso and Washington D.C. to see if it is investigating the fires at the landfill.
As of now, we have not received a response from the agency.
