Imagine you are a parent, and that out of the blue, you get a letter from your child's school telling you not to worry — that they're ready to evacuate or shelter in place if an underground fire at a nearby landfill reaches radioactive waste on the same property.
That's pretty much what happened recently in suburban St. Louis.
Landfill fires are pretty common. But this one is different: It's only about a thousand feet away from nearly 9,000 tons of nuclear waste — and there's no barrier in between.
Imagine you are a parent, and that out of the blue, you get a letter from your child's school telling you not to worry — that they're ready to evacuate or shelter in place if an underground fire at a nearby landfill reaches radioactive waste on the same property.
That's pretty much what happened recently in suburban St. Louis.
Landfill fires are pretty common. But this one is different: It's only about a thousand feet away from nearly 9,000 tons of nuclear waste — and there's no barrier in between.
Hundreds of people packed a recent community meeting about the landfills, located in Bridgeton, Mo.
"I feel like so many people in St. Louis are not even aware this is going on," says one attendee, Cole Kelley.
Mother-of-three Cole Kelley expresses her concerns about the landfills at a community meeting in October. Kelley lives in the St. Louis suburb of Ladue, about nine miles away from Bridgeton, where the landfills are located. She was one of about 500 area residents to attend the meeting.
Véronique LaCapra/St. Louis Public Radio
Many of the people at the meeting didn't know of the landfills' existence, even though the fire started five years ago, and the radioactive waste was dumped back in the early 1970s.
Residents like Carmen Burrus and Shannon Walker came to the meeting with many questions: How can people get their children home safe from school? Why isn't there discussion about mass evacuations?
Flares at the Bridgeton Landfill outside St. Louis burn off noxious fumes, including those generated by an underground fire that's been burning since 2010. The "fire" is really a high-temperature chemical reaction that consumes the waste below the landfill's surface.
Image Credit: Véronique LaCapra/St. Louis Public Radio
Read more at NPR.
