[Nestor Chayelle] The Great American Tire Pile

Famous wastelands humans are responsible for

One of the many tire piles over the country, and over the world.

Over 50 years ago, Ed Filbin -for some reason- imagined that one day, discarded rubber tires would be worth a fortune.  So, he started collecting them in California and threw them in an area that was remote and suitable as a dump site but is now considered incompatible with current zoning and a fire hazard.

And so it was that he managed to collect 42 million tires. He put them in a giant pile. His fleet of trucks is still collecting 10,000 to 20,000 tires a day.

Every year Americans discard an estimated 250 million tires. Federal officials estimate 2 million old tires are now piled in dumps throughout the country and warn that these tire heaps pose a public health threat because they are "excellent breeding grounds for mosquitoes."

As you may have guessed, Philbin's dream didn`t come true, and in the 80`s in a controversial experiment being watched by public officials and energy firms across the nation, a private company built and tested a plant that promised to turn the tires into electricity.

Burning tires like stove wood under a boiler, an incinerator consumed up to 900 tire carcasses an hour and produced 14 megawatts of electricity, enough energy to light up a small city of 15,000.

Officials viewed the plant as a way to eliminate the massive fire hazard posed by the tire pile, which has been likened to a volcano waiting to erupt. The builders of the plant saw it as a new source of energy. But this project and other similar were not viable due to the impact on the environment.

Eventually, the tires were whittled down to a 10 million mountain, but then, in 1999, disaster struck. Literally.

Lightning struck and ignited the pile.

The authorities tried to put it out, but simply didn't have the resources to subdue the fire, so they had but one option: Wait for it to burn itself out. They likely expected it to take days. The inferno raged for a solid month.

Bonus: it's true what they say: The Simpsons really has done everything.

- Nestor Chayelle