MAYFLOWER, Ark. — A large fire burned in the city of Mayflower for most of the day on Tuesday, Feb. 1.
The flames broke out early in the morning at a landfill on the southwest side of town.
The question of the day was what started the fire, but it's an answer that authorities said we probably won't know for some time.
According to Mayflower Fire Chief Ashton Tolliver, firefighters can't figure that out until the fire is completely gone, and they finally wrapped up things a little before 5 p.m. on Tuesday.
For neighbors like Tachany Evans, who lives right across the street, it was a scary wakeup call.
"There was a large boom, but typically you hear loud noises because of trucks coming in and out, and then you know, you saw a fire and you saw the smoke. It was a lot of smoke," she said.
Evans has called White City Road home all her life, but the landfill across the street hasn't always been her neighbor.
"Not as long as I've lived here, I want to say maybe the last three to five years," she said.
Even before Tuesday morning, when the neighborhood woke up to flames outside their windows, Evans said a petition was already circulating, wanting the landfill moved.
"It smells, it's dirty. The vegetation is dying. You know, we see animals on the road dead, I don't know if it's from the landfill, and then animals come up missing and it's just not slightly," she said.
The boom that Evans heard came a little before 7 a.m., according to Tolliver.
His team had been up since 2:30 on Tuesday morning, already working two house fires, when they were dispatched to Alternative Waste Management Landfill.
"We were on the scene in just a few minutes and when we came in, the whole dump was blazing, and we started calling for our mutual aid resources," Tolliver said.
Eight different departments came to help from the Arkansas Forestry Commission to the Conway Fire Department.
Even with all that help, Tolliver said the location of the fire made it not a quick fix.
"It's been very difficult, you're fighting a whole lot of trash that's been piled up, garbage, you have tires, there's all types of debris," he said.
No matter how long it took, the team didn't stop until the flames did.
"We're a volunteer based fire department, so most of the guys out here are volunteers, so it's volunteers and neighbors helping neighbors," Tolliver said.
Crews were monitoring the air quality all day and said there was no threat.
There is a subdivision on the other side of the landfill, but Tolliver said there wasn't any immediate danger to that area and they had crews monitoring it.
According to Tolliver, employees at the landfill will be monitoring the area all of Tuesday night.
We will update this story with more information as it becomes available.