VANCOUVER LANDFILL DEMOLITION FIRE 

Background

 

The Vancouver Landfill is located at the southwest corner of Burns Bog in the municipality of Delta, approximately 20 km south of Vancouver. The facility is owned and operated by the City of Vancouver and receives approximately 400,000 metric tonnes of municipal solid waste each year.  

Demolition materials consisting primarily of woodwaste from the demolition of wood frame buildings are accepted at the Vancouver Landfill for use in the construction of a “mattress layer” under municipal solid waste.  The mattress layer provides a foundation layer on top of the compressible peat that occurs in the vicinity of the Vancouver Landfill. The demolition material also acts as a conduit for drainage of leachate from within the landfill to a perimeter leachate collection ditch.  

The demolition layer has been traditionally filled to a thickness of approximately 3 metres prior to filling with municipal solid waste. The area where the fire occurred was previously an open ditch system between two adjacent landfill cells.  As part of a strategy to increase the height of the landfill, the demolition material layer in this area was filled in two lifts to create a drainage layer approximately 8 metres in thickness. A thicker drainage layer was installed to account for future differential settlement of the underlying peat soils.   Demolition materials were installed in the area over approximately three months commencing in the spring of 2000. As shown in Figure 1, the total area that had received two layers of demolition material was approximately 80 by 700 metres.

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