JACKSON, Miss.—Tanya Spann was working the cash register at a South Jackson gas station on Aug. 17 when she first heard sirens. Less than a mile down the road, a massive fire had erupted at a tire recycling plant, sending pillars of flame and coils of black smoke into the clear summer sky. The blaze was so ferocious that gas station customers stopped filling their tanks to take in the scene from their cars.
“They just parked and watched,” Spann said, adding that the fire was the fiercest—and smokiest—she’s seen in her many years as a South Jackson resident.
Over a week later, the Jackson Fire Department has finally subdued the fire at the Mississippi Tire Recycling building near E. McDowell Road, reducing the once-towering blaze to piles of smoldering rubber and rubble. But with smoke levels mounting in the days after the fire broke out, authorities tasked with protecting Mississippians from environmental threats have been focused on air quality concerns.
Though they don’t occur as often as other types of fires, tire fires can cause widespread environmental damage and create major headaches for first responders. Burning rubber releases oil, gas and other compounds, providing a constant fuel source for the fire and making it exceptionally hard to extinguish. That extends the window for emissions to enter air, soil and water. In some cases, fires at facilities like the one in South Jackson have lasted for months.
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“If you set one tire on fire, it’s real hard to put out,” Jackson Fire Department Assistant Fire Chief Patrick Armon said in an Aug. 20 interview. “Now, just imagine: Instead of one tire, there’s 10,000 of them. That’s what’s going on right now.”
Smoke rises from the site of the fire at the tire recycling facility in South Jackson on Aug. 20, 2024. Photo by Illan Ireland ” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Tire-Fire-South-Jackson-1_cred-Illan-Ireland.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Tire-Fire-South-Jackson-1_cred-Illan-Ireland.jpg?fit=780%2C519&ssl=1″ tabindex=”0″ role=”button” src=”https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Tire-Fire-South-Jackson-1_cred-Illan-Ireland.jpg?resize=780%2C519&ssl=1″ alt=”Tire fire at a tire plant framed by trees on either side. Tires are visible in the dirt below the smoke” class=”wp-image-46452″