Firefighters managed to contain a large blaze at the Elbasan landfill on July 8 that had swept through the site over the past week, raising concerns over environmental safety during a spell of high summer temperatures.

Elbasan, located in central Albania, has struggled with waste management challenges in recent years, and local authorities have called for increased investment in technology to improve emergency response capabilities.

Defense Minister Pirro Vengu and Interior Minister Ervin Hoxha inspected the landfill alongside local officials, praising the coordinated efforts of firefighters, civil emergency teams and the armed forces in preventing what they said could have been a major environmental disaster.

“The rapid response and coordinated intervention protected the community’s health and avoided a wider environmental catastrophe,” Vengu said during the visit, adding that drones had been used to monitor the site and identify active fires.

Authorities deployed more than 100 personnel, dozens of fire engines and emergency helicopters to tackle fires that had spread from surrounding hills and forests to the landfill, exacerbated by hot weather and wind. At one point, workers dumped 10,000 tonnes of soil over burning waste in an effort to smother underground flames.

Vengu said the incident highlighted the need to modernise Albania’s civil emergency systems, proposing the installation of thermal cameras for landfill monitoring and the permanent stationing of firefighting vehicles near waste sites.

He added that the state-owned company KAYO had begun producing fire extinguishers and other emergency equipment domestically to reduce reliance on foreign suppliers.

A working group, including foreign experts, has been established to assess the impact of the fire and recommend measures to prevent similar incidents, officials said.

Landfill fires are a sporadic event in the Western Balkans. Two years ago, a huge fire broke out at the landfill in the Albanian coastal city of Vlora, a popular tourist destination. 

Like other Western Balkan countries, Albania is gradually improving its waste management systems but the process is a slow one. Across the region, waste generation has increased sharply in recent decades, but waste management infrastructure has in general failed to keep up. 

In Serbia, Europe’s largest unmanaged landfill at Vinca, near the capital Belgrade, was shut down in 2021, finally bringing to an end the constant threat to the city’s residents of air pollution. Frequent fires at the landfill used to engulf parts of the city in toxic fumes, with one of the worst breaking out just weeks before the closure of the site and covering the city with smoke and haze. 

In Montenegro’s second city, Nis, the Budos Hill landfill once burned for 45 consecutive days in 2020. 

Albania still lags behind other countries in the region. Until 2016, the country did not have a single landfill site; waste was left in the streets, piled up and burnt or dumped in rivers, mountains or the sea.

Three waste-to-energy incinerators, built to address the problem, became the centre of a high-level scandal. In 2022 it was revealed that the incinerators, at Elbasan, Fier and Tirana, had been built at a cost of hundreds of millions of euros but two had never been put into operation. 

An investigation was launched into the distribution of around €430mn to the firms tasked with building and operating the three incinerators. Among those sentenced in the case are former environment minister Lefter Koka, who was given two years in prison for abuse of office in the Tirana incinerator case.