The one-hectare landfill in Quang Ninh Commune, Quang Tri Province, caught fire on the afternoon of March 31 and has been smoldering ever since.

Hot weather and strong, dry foehn winds, known locally as “Lao winds” because they sweep down from the Truong Son range that borders Laos, fanned the flames across the entire site within hours, sending a column of smoke tens of meters into the air.

The dump sits roughly 300 meters from the Bung-Van Ninh section of the North-South Expressway that runs the length of Vietnam from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City.

Smoke has repeatedly drifted across the road, Nhan Dan reported, and is heaviest in the early morning and late evening when temperatures drop and wind direction shifts. Authorities say visibility on those stretches has at times fallen to dangerous levels.

A kilometer away in Le Ky 1 hamlet, residents say the past eight days have been unbearable.

Hoang Thanh Canh, 70, said his family had been breathing the fumes since the fire started. “The acrid smoke from burning plastic comes straight into the house. At night the smoke is as thick as fog, causing chest tightness and difficulty breathing,” he said. Several neighbors have sent their young children to stay with relatives in other parts of the province.

The landfill only opened in October 2025 and serves four communes: Quang Ninh, Truong Son, Ninh Chau and Truong Ninh. Together they generate around 100 cubic meters of household waste a day, all of it trucked to this single site for burial.

Nguyen Ngoc Doan, who heads the Quang Ninh Public Works Management Board, said the fire was almost certainly triggered by flammable items mixed into the rubbish: disposable lighters, mini gas canisters, batteries and power banks. As the waste pile heats up under the central Vietnam sun, those items can explode or self-ignite, setting off chain reactions through the surrounding plastic, Doan said.

Putting the fire out has proved extraordinarily difficult. The site is far from any water source, and the rubbish is layered several meters deep, allowing flames to smolder underneath where hoses cannot reach. After consulting with provincial authorities, the management board adopted a smothering strategy: dump earth across the burning waste to cut off oxygen, then water the surface to cool what remains.

Since April 3, an excavator and two trucks have hauled hundreds of cubic meters of earth to the site, spreading a layer roughly half a meter thick over the burning rubbish.

By the morning of April 8, the perimeter had been sealed, the fire was contained, and the smoke had thinned to white plumes. But it has not been fully extinguished, and Doan said the operation will continue until the site is cold.