The Conflagration

A great fire broke out this week in my region about twenty kilometres away from where I live. That was much too close because this was a tire dump that went up in flames producing thick, black toxic smoke. Luck was in for us as the smoke blew off to the West but it sure as hell was a nightmare for everyone living under its fallout.

The problem is that today's tyres are so well made to meet stringent standards for safety and security that when the thread wears down and the tyre has to be disposed of the question becomes, "How?"

All around the world this universal problem has experts scratching their heads, and in the meantime the tyres go to holding dumps and they accumulate. Here in Spain we are having horrendous high temperatures in the cities and the mountain tops, but in these dumps where there could be millions of tyres the heat that builds must be truly hellish. Its no surprise that from time to time spontaneous combustion will occur and that will be the start of something that is almost impossible to stop.

Apparently some place in Wales had stored 10 million tyres and a fire broke out that burnt continuously for 15 years. For this reason the dump owner cannot set his own fires, but apart from the hellish nature of fighting to control such an outbreak fire is probably his best friend. The stockpile will be reduced in volume but the cost to the environment is unacceptable.

Re-Threading was thought at one time to be the solution and while the industry continues to do rethreads these are dangerous in countries with high speed highways. Trucks especially use them but I constantly come across threads that come off, which is not good for the vehicle that lost it; for following vehicles they can cause accidents as they become an obstacle that can cause a car to go out of control.

Clearly something new is required to replace the wheel in its present form. Manufacturers have been concentrating on developing new and super efficient, secure tyres to serve heavier and faster vehicles, but that still leaves the by-product when the tyre wears out.

I'm not suggesting I have any ideas, this is not my area of expertise, and I'm certain experts are researching the issue. As drivers we change our tyres as and when necessary and think no more of the matter. Every now and again we are reminded that the problem has not gone away. When one of these dumps goes up in flames a lot of people are affected.

An illegal tyre dump near Madrid it appears was set afire by arsonists which resulted in 9,000 people being evacuated. That's the type of impact a fire like this can have because of the toxicity of the burn off. A normal forest fire is bad enough and Spain is having more than enough of those, but to turn a horror into a genuine nightmare a tyre fire will do.

Copyright (c) 2017
Eugene Carmichael