Pile of 7 million tires on fire in Kuwait
Photo credit: Amusing Planet
While Canada has been at work implementing a national carbon tax to protect the environment, firefighters in Kuwait have been busy trying to contain a tire fire which started in 2012 and may consume up to 7 million tires.
“An average automobile tire can travel around 30,000 kilometers before they need to be replaced. Tires that have reached the end of their lifetime are usually recycled, but in Kuwait, they are dumped into one of the biggest landfills on earth in Sulaibiya area near Kuwait City,” reports the website Amusing Planet. “Every year gigantic holes are dug out in the desert and filled with old tyres. There are already seven million tires out there. The expanse of rubber is so vast that they are now visible from space.
“The tires arrive from both Kuwait and other countries. Four companies are currently in charge of the disposal of the tires.”
The Sulaibiya tire fire is a massively larger version of Ontario’s Hagarsville Tire Fire, which occurred in Hagarsville near Hamilton, Ontario in 1990. The fire burned for 17 days, drove 4,000 people from their homes, involved more than 250 firefighters and cost the province as much as $25 million. Two waterbombers were flown in to help douse the flames, which had been set as a prank by five teen-agers.
Tire Fire
DEVELOPING: The world's largest tire dump at the Al Sulabiya tire site in Kuwait is on fire and is visible on satellite images. The tire graveyard is estimated to have 7 million tires.pic.twitter.com/ESApEcP6k6
— Election Wizard (@ElectionWiz) August 3, 2021
NASA image of Kuwaiti tire fire
From the NASA website:
“On April 17, 2012, a fire broke out in a tire dump near Al Jahrah, Kuwait. Agence France-Presse reported that the fire was fueled by about five million tires. Hundreds of firefighters, aided by soldiers and by employees of the Kuwait Oil Company, struggled to contain the blaze. The Kuwait News Agency reported that the nation’s Fire Services Directorate expected to have the fire completely extinguished later that day.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image at 10:55 a.m. local time (07:55 Universal Time) on April 17, 2012. The red outline approximates the actively burning area, and thick black smoke blows eastward from the blaze.
Authorities were grateful that winds blew most of the smoke out to sea, but members of parliament were still expected to convene a special session to discuss the fire’s environmental impact on Kuwait, news sources said.”
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response. Caption by Michon Scott.
